


Having A Baby Changes Everything

by Shadowscast



Series: Enough Time [5]
Category: Once a Thief (TV)
Genre: Adventures In Rural Ontario, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Series, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Notion Of Family Is Complicated, They Buy Curtains But It's Really Not A Curtain Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2020-08-10 04:11:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 100,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20129143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowscast/pseuds/Shadowscast
Summary: The agents must guard and care for a toddler, while dealing with the fallout from a particularly brutal mission.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you _so_ much to Yourlibrarian for beta reading, as well as for all of the encouragement and helpful plot-related discussions!

**Canada Day (July 1) 1999**

Vic woke up in darkness to the jangling ring of his bedside phone. He fumbled for it blindly, not quite bothering to open his eyes. "Hello?"

"Victor." The Director's purr. "Did I wake you?"

Vic blinked a couple of times, forcing his eyes to focus on the glowing readout of his digital clock. It was a little after one in the morning; he'd barely had an hour of sleep. "What do you want?"

"You and your partners, at the Agency, as fast as you can get here. In night-ops gear. Can I assume that you're in a convenient position to pass this message on to Mac and Li Ann?"

"Ah, yes." Vic ran his free hand over his face, massaging away the grogginess. "Yes, you can assume that." He _hoped_ it was nothing more than an assumption; he'd gotten into the habit of checking his bedroom for hidden cameras on a daily basis, and he hadn't found a new one in weeks.

"Wonderful. See you soon," the Director said, and hung up.

Vic returned the phone to its cradle, then clapped twice. The lights came on.

Mac and Li Ann still _looked_ like they were fast asleep. They were curled up together in a tangle of limbs. Vic had expected that; he hadn't felt Mac snuggled against his own chest when he'd woken up to the phone's ring, which obviously meant that Mac had rolled over in his sleep to cuddle Li Ann instead.

"Wakey, wakey," Vic murmured. "The Director wants us." No reaction. "Come on, guys, I _know_ the phone woke you up."

"Five more minutes," Mac mumbled against Li Ann's neck.

"Mrmph," Li Ann agreed.

"The Director called us in the middle of the night and told us to come straight to the Agency," Vic pointed out, getting up on his knees. "Somebody's probably being held at gunpoint. Do I have to threaten to tickle you?" Li Ann wasn't ticklish, but Mac was.

"No," Mac squeaked, curling up into a ball. Li Ann put her arms protectively around him and squint-glared at Vic.

"So you're definitely awake, then." Vic got off the bed and headed for his closet, feeling _fairly_ confident that his partners would follow his lead pretty quickly.

They were, after all, highly-skilled secret agents and very dedicated to their work.

Vic yanked the closet door open. He grabbed outfits for Mac and Li Ann and tossed them over towards the bed before starting to pull on his own. No undressing was required. It was a warm night, and they'd all been sleeping in nothing but underwear—including Li Ann, who wore boyshorts and was topless.

That was something that had taken Vic some getting used to, midway through June when the nights started getting hot. It had been strange enough adjusting to the idea that Li Ann would join him and Mac in bed two or three nights a week in the first place. But crawling into bed _nearly naked_ with his ex-fiancée who was emphatically not dating him? Yeah, that was a bit of a head trip. But Mac and Li Ann both seemed totally comfortable with it, and over the past six months Vic had gotten pretty used to overcoming his ideas about normal relationships, in order to accommodate them.

"I can't find the extra clip for my P-10," Mac said. He was still only half-dressed, but he'd started strapping on his weapons.

"You used it when we were fighting those cultists last week," Li Ann reminded him. She was in the process of slicking her hair down and tying it back out of the way. "Did you remember to get another one from the armoury?"

Swearing. Apparently Mac had not remembered. Then, plaintively, "Vic, why didn't you remind me to pick up more ammo?"

"I _did_," Vic said mildly. "On Tuesday."

Mac gave a guilty start, but immediately turned it around: "Well, why didn't you _follow up_ to make sure I'd done it?"

Vic rolled his eyes and chose not to reply. He knew that there were neurological reasons why Mac was bad at that kind of thing. Executive functioning was always going to be a weakness for him. Vic did try to help him out, to compensate—but there were limits.

Mac sighed, and answered his own question. "Not your job. Sorry." He kept getting dressed, looking glum.

Vic couldn't bear to see Mac unhappy. He really couldn't. He went over and kissed him. "I love you," he reminded him. "Just the way you are."

That might as well be their secret code-phrase. Mac brightened right up and kissed Vic back with enthusiasm.

Li Ann cleared her throat. "Guys? You're adorable. But we've got to move."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, they were walking through the double doors of the briefing room.

The Director was on her feet, pacing. When the agents walked in, she pointedly glanced at her elegant Chopard watch.

"We hit construction on the Gardiner Expressway," Vic felt compelled to mention. Then he fully took in the scene in front of him: the Director was not alone.

It was fairly unusual for her to bring outsiders into the briefing room, but not unprecedented. When she did, it was usually the start of some uncomfortable team-up. But the pair sitting at the briefing table tonight didn't look like agents. It was a man and a woman, both in their mid-to-late forties by Vic's quick guess. They were both a little pudgy in a desk-job kind of way, and dressed in crumpled business casual. They both looked tense, strained.

"Huang, Geneviève, allow me to present my best team of agents: Victor, Li Ann and Mac," the Director said, beckoning Vic and the others over to the table. There were sufficient empty chairs for all of them; the Director took the one at the head of the table, of course, and Vic, Mac and Li Ann took the three along the near side, facing Huang and Geneviève. Before fully sitting down, Mac leaned over the table to offer them both a handshake.

The Director, meanwhile, slid a red leather folder down the table to the agents. It stopped in front of Li Ann, and she opened it. Vic leaned over to see better, incidentally putting a hand on Mac's shoulder. Inside the folder was a glossy eight-by-ten photo of a little girl: a laughing dark-haired toddler in a fluffy pink dress, astride a wooden rocking-horse. It looked like a professional studio shot.

"This is Taylor Bouchard-Wong," the Director said. "Huang and Geneviève's two-year-old daughter. She was abducted from their home, just after 10 p.m. tonight."

Vic looked up sharply at the Director. "Jesus," he swore. "A kidnapping? You should be calling the police, not us. We don't have the resources for a large-scale search. You want officers on the ground, _now_, as many as possible."

The Director just raised an eyebrow. Calm, collected. "That would be true if we needed to _find_ Taylor," she said. "But we know exactly where she is—and we have a pretty good idea of who has her. Look at the next few images in the package, please."

Li Ann slid the photo to the side, and then spread out the next three pictures—also eight-by-ten glossies. "Aerial photos?" Li Ann guessed.

"Satellite images," Geneviève corrected her. "With navigational overlay." She had a strong Quebec-French accent.

Vic looked at the images. A moment's study let him figure out that they were at three different levels of zoom. The first showed the dark blue waters of Lake Ontario at its bottom edge, and Toronto's grey urban sprawl. The south edge of Lake Simcoe showed at the top of the photo, and there was a yellow dot near it. The middle photo also had the yellow dot, which was situated in a rough parallelogram of forest which was, itself, surrounded by grids of farmland. On this image the highways and local roads had been highlighted and labelled. The most zoomed-in picture showed a single building—it looked like a vacation cabin, on a small green lot surrounded by woods. "No way is this one a satellite image," Vic said, tapping it. "Not with this kind of resolution."

"Oh, but it is," the Director said. "Did I not mention? Geneviève and Huang are defence contractors with a specialty in cutting-edge surveillance. They primarily work for the Americans, but they live locally, and the Agency enjoys a, shall we say, special friendship with them."

Well, that maybe explained a thing or two about the Director's periodic bouts of omniscience. Interesting. "And you think that Taylor is here?" Vic asked, touching the image of the cabin again.

"We know she is," Huang said. He had a Chinese accent, but it was faint.

"There's a small local airfield just a few kilometres from the cabin," the Director added. "We're afraid there may be a plan to transfer Taylor to another location by air, perhaps as soon as tomorrow. So time is of the essence. I want you three to go down to the armoury and pick up full assault gear, and then head directly to the cabin. You should be able to get there well before sunrise. Your objectives are to extract Taylor safely, and kill all members of the team that's holding her."

"What?" Li Ann said, sounding shocked.

"We're not assassins," Mac protested, more or less simultaneously.

"_Who_ is holding her?" Vic asked, which seemed to be an important point that nobody had covered yet.

The Director drummed her fingers on the table. "Mm, well, the ransom demand was a little vague on that front. But it's either the Russians or the Chinese, and my money's on Beijing."

"Bei— Bei_jing_?" Vic managed to choke out. "You mean the Chinese _government_. You think the Chinese _government_ has kidnapped a two-year-old and is holding her for ransom?"

"For some very juicy military-grade technological secrets, yes," the Director nodded gravely. "The idea was that Huang and Geneviève would panic and cross over. Luckily, they thought of coming to me." She gave the Bouchard-Wongs a little nod, which they returned, looking stressed.

"Ah..." Vic's throat felt dry. "I hate to be the one to say it, but ... don't you think that this is a little _above_ our pay grade? We don't go up against governments. Maybe this is a job for the military?"

"We can't send in the _army_," the Director said, dryly. "We're not at war with China, and I'd like to keep it that way."

"So you send _us_ in and tell us to kill Chinese troops?" Mac said. "You don't think Beijing will get cranky about that?"

"Oh, who said anything about troops?" the Director asked. "I assure you, the team holding Taylor won't have any more official status with their government than you do with yours. This is going to be black ops and shadowy government agencies all around. That way, everything's deniable and nobody has to go to war."

"Please," Geneviève said. Her voice cracked, and she swallowed. "The Director assured us that you have the best chance of bringing our little girl back alive."

Vic met Mac's and Li Ann's eyes. They looked as intimidated as he felt. But—they worked for the Director. And there was a child in peril. "Okay," Vic said, speaking for the team. "Can you tell us any more about what we're going to face at the cabin?"

* * *

"I've got eyes on the perimeter guard," Vic whispered. "He's moving clockwise. Sixty metres north-east of the cabin."

"If we wait a minute we can get to the door without him seeing us, no problem," Mac whispered back over the radio."

"We have to take him out," Li Ann said. "If we leave him out here, as soon as the shooting starts he's going to be running to the cabin, or calling for backup."

"I don't like this," Mac whispered.

"None of us do, man," Vic returned. "But he's coming your way. Have you got this?"

"I've got it," Mac replied, sounding resigned. Then there was silence.

Silence. More silence.

Vic counted to thirty, slowly, heart in his throat.

"Guard's down," Mac whispered, coming back on the radio. "Move in."

Twenty metres from the cabin, keeping just inside the trees, Vic popped down the infrared goggles he'd been handed at the armoury. "Oh my God," he said immediately, taking in the red-and-yellow person-shaped blobs that appeared. "I can see everybody in the cabin. These are _way_ better than our usual gear."

"Vic, _what_ do you see?" Li Ann whispered, tensely.

"One person standing. Probably by the door. Two sitting. Two lying down in the back, plus a little one lying down too, gotta be Taylor. That might be a separate bedroom they're in, but I can't see walls. I do see one _very_ bright, very small blob hovering in midair between the two sitters—probably a kerosene lamp on a table."

"Okay, keep watching, tell me if any of the people move," Li Ann said. "I'm going in with the ladder now."

"I'm watching Li Ann's back," Mac added.

With the infrared goggles, Vic saw a dull orange blob moving across the lawn towards the cabin on the side opposite him. She was faint but visible even through the near _and_ far walls of the cabin. They were thin walls, sure, not winterized—but still, this equipment was fantastic.

The cabin had a skylight; they'd seen it in the satellite photos. The plan called for Li Ann and Mac to climb up to the roof—hopefully quietly enough that nobody noticed, but that was what Vic was watching for—and then attack through the skylight simultaneously with Vic shooting his way through the front door.

Vic watched Li Ann and Mac ascending the ladder; watched them crouch-walk up the roof. Nobody inside reacted visibly. The night had become fairly windy, which would be working in Li Ann and Mac's favour; the noise of the wind might cover up the slight scuffle of their feet on the roof tiles.

"We're in position," Li Ann whispered after a moment. "I've got the south-west sitting guy."

"Which way's south?" Mac whispered quickly. Vic had to imagine Li Ann's eye-roll since he couldn't see it in the infrared, but he saw her pointing. "Okay," Mac whispered. "North-east sitting guy in my sights."

"I've got the one on the door," Vic whispered, raising his gun and aiming _through_ the door. He took a few careful steps towards the cabin, not quite breaking out of the cover of the woods. "Three ... two ... one."

Gunshots. Splintering wood; shattering glass. At least one voice crying out in pain.

Vic wrenched off the infrared goggles and sprinted. The door had a jagged hole blown out of it but he still had to kick it twice to get it open. Inside, the kerosene lamp had been knocked over and flames were crawling across the floor. There were bodies on the floor, and bodies in motion, too—guns firing, and hand-to-hand fighting. Vic had to assume this was Mac and Li Ann fighting the two bad guys who'd been sleeping in the back, but in the faint, flickering, smokey light and the chaos, he really couldn't tell. Everybody was wearing black clothes and hoods, and shouting in Chinese.

Vic stayed low, covered his head with his arms, and ran towards the end of the cabin where Taylor had been sleeping. He kept close to the wall and managed to stay out of trouble. There was indeed a separate bedroom, it turned out, and the door was standing open. Vic went through the doorway quickly, leading with his gun, but there was nobody left in the room except the little girl.

She was sleeping on a blanket, directly on the floor. Sleeping, or...? Fuck. It seemed impossible that the gunshots and shouting in the next room wouldn't have woken her. Vic ran over to her, tugged off one of his gloves, pressed a finger to the pulse point at her neck.

A quick, steady flutter.

Okay. Sleeping.

Vic scooped her up and held her against his chest. She still didn't stir. Drugged, then, probably.

He glanced hopefully at the room's window, but it was too small, too high in the wall—he couldn't make it out that way, particularly not with a limp two-year-old in his arms.

Back through the main room, then.

Holding Taylor close, doing his best to put his body between her and the action, Vic sprinted back the way he'd come. The flames were higher, the smoke was thicker. There were still periodic gunshots but Vic couldn't see who was fighting. He remembered exactly where the door was, though—and less than two seconds later, he was out in the clear night air.

He wanted to stop, to look back, to see if anyone was following him, but he had a toddler in his arms. He ran straight across the lawn and into the trees. _Then_, finally, in some kind of cover, he turned back towards the cabin.

Its roof was still intact and dark, but he could see flames through the half-open door and the window. Smoke was pouring out of the shattered skylight.

"Mac, Li Ann," Vic shouted into his microphone—shouted, because the time for stealth was definitely over. "I've got Taylor. Get out of there!"

Then he waited, tasting bile. He thought he heard another gunshot, but he couldn't be sure; at this point, the flames were crackling audibly as well.

Then a body rolled out of the front door of the cabin.

"Fuck," Vic whispered, almost like a prayer. Little girl in his arms. He couldn't go in, couldn't go back there...

Two black-clad figures. Crouching, hand-in-hand, evacuating the cabin. The taller one pulling the shorter one along. "Mac, Li Ann?" Vic whispered into the radio. He couldn't get his voice to go any louder than that.

"We're out," Mac said over the radio, and coughed. The two figures stopped, looking around, and pulled off their ski masks. "Nobody's left alive in there. Where are you?"

"Here." Vic stepped out of the woods, jogged across the small clearing, and met Mac and Li Ann for a desperate three-way hug (keeping Taylor tucked up against him, one-handed; she weighed thirty pounds at most). "Jesus, you guys. You couldn't have gotten out a little faster?"

They were both coughing pretty hard. "That last one was pretty stubborn," Li Ann said when she caught her breath, glancing at the body lying crumpled on the ground immediately in front of the cabin. "Now what?"

"Now we call the Director," Vic reminded her. "She said to call in for instructions as soon as we have Taylor secure."

Vic put his phone on speaker, and held it in the middle of their little cluster. The Director answered on the first ring. "Vic," she said. "Tell me you have Taylor."

"We've got her," he confirmed. "She seems unharmed, but she hasn't woken up—I think she's drugged."

"That seems likely," the Director agreed. "Well, hopefully she'll come out of it all right. Was it the Chinese, or the Russians?"

"Chinese," Li Ann said. "Mandarin-speakers. Beijing accents."

"And are they all dead?" was the Director's follow-up question.

"Yes," Vic said, with a wince and a glance towards the crumpled body.

"Er," Mac said. And coughed. "Ah, that first perimeter guard is still alive."

"Oh dear," the Director said. And then, "I'm hearing a lot of coughing. Is everything all right?"

"Mac and Li Ann got some smoke inhalation," Vic explained. "Taylor and I are fine."

"Smoke inhalation from _what_?" the Director asked.

Vic winced. "Did we forget to mention that the cabin is on fire?"

"Oh _dear_," the Director said again. There was a pause, and then, "All right, listen closely. Here's what needs to happen. You're going to get to highway eleven and drive north. Just outside of Huntsville, about two hours from where you are now, there's an abandoned Texaco gas station. Mr. Dobrinsky and I are going to meet you there at seven in the morning. Got that?"

"Huntsville," Vic repeated. "Texaco. Seven in the morning."

"Good," she said. "But before you leave the cabin, you need to do a couple of things—and you need to do them fast, because the local volunteer fire department could be arriving in as little as ten minutes if anybody's seen your smoke.

"First: there is a tracking device implanted under the skin of Taylor's left shoulder. You should be able to find it by touch. It's about the size of a grain of rice. You need to cut it out and dispose of it. Ideally, throw it into the brook that runs about a hundred metres south-east of the cabin. It's essential that you get rid of it _before_ you leave the vicinity of the cabin. Do you understand?"

"Got it," Vic said, although he was feeling a bit freaked out at the instruction. A subdermal _tracking device_? In a _toddler_? He glanced down at Taylor. Her little face, pressed against his chest, looked angelically calm.

"Second: you need to kill that last guard. Ideally, throw the body into the fire with the rest of them."

"What?" Mac's eyes widened. "He's no threat. I knocked him out, I zip-tied him. He's not going anywhere."

"I am so sorry," the Director said—and she sounded sincere. "Ideally I would send up the Cleaners to take care of it, but there just isn't time. One of you will have to do it."

Vic shared a wild-eyed look with Mac and Li Ann, but it was Mac who spoke up again. "He's no _threat_," he repeated.

"Operationally, you've neutralized him," the Director agreed. "But politically, he is a very serious threat. Dead bodies, I can cover up. A live Chinese government stealth operative in the hands of the Beaverton volunteer fire department—that is a bomb waiting to go off."

"But—" Mac started again.

"Mr. Ramsey," the Director cut him off sharply. "You have your orders." She hung up.

The agents stared at each other for a moment longer. Light from the growing flames in the cabin danced across their pale faces.

"Well, we'd better move," Li Ann said. She pulled a penlight out, and shone it on Taylor. "Put her down on the ground, maybe?"

A bit reluctantly, Vic stretched the toddler out on the dew-damp grass. She was wearing a light cotton one-piece pyjama, printed with yellow ducks. It had a snap clasp at the neck, and then a zipper. He undid the snap, pulled the zipper down to the middle of her chest, and then eased the fabric away from her left shoulder. "I feel it," he said, running his finger along her smooth skin. Just as the Director had said—a hard little bump, the size of a rice grain.

There was a snick. Vic looked up and saw that Li Ann had pulled out a utility knife.

"Seriously?" he asked, his voice cracking a little.

"Do you have a better idea?" she asked—and then handed him the knife.

"Ah, sorry, I can't watch this," Mac said, and turned abruptly away, taking a few steps towards the cabin.

"Jesus." Vic hunched his shoulders, took a breath. "Mac, if you're not going to help with this, go deal with the perimeter guard."

_Deal with_. Kill. The guard that Mac was supposed to have killed in the first place.

Mac stalked away. Vic turned back to Taylor. He pressed the knife against the edge of the bump on her shoulder.

The curved blade of the knife was nearly as big as the kid's whole upper arm.

Vic squeezed his eyes shut, took a breath, opened them again. Lowered the knife. "I can't do it."

"It's just a little nick." Li Ann made an exasperated noise, and then held out the flashlight for Vic to take. "Give me the knife."

So they switched tools, and Vic held the light, and Li Ann pressed the blade against Taylor's skin. Then she gave the tip an efficient little twist, and blood welled up. Taylor's eyes popped open, and she stared at Vic and Li Ann for one shocked second, and then howled.

"Sorry, kid," Li Ann muttered, levering the tip of the knife in under the bump. In a moment, a tiny, shiny metallic cylinder was revealed. Li Ann plucked it off the knife with her free hand. Taylor closed her eyes and continued to howl, louder than before.

"Bandages. Do we have bandages?" Vic asked.

Li Ann pulled a field dressing out of another pocket of her outfit. "Just this." It was a gauze pad the size of a man's palm, sticky around the edges—meant to be slapped over a bullet hole to hold the blood in. It was way too big for Taylor's tiny arm, but Li Ann wrapped it around her shoulder anyway. "When we get back to the car, we can get the first aid kit out of the trunk, do a better job," she said. She looked up, touched her microphone. "Mac? We're done here."

Mac didn't reply over the radio, but glancing over Li Ann's shoulder, Vic saw him walking back towards them.

"Well?" Vic asked as soon as Mac got to them.

Mac clenched his jaw, shook his head. "Couldn't do it. He's _awake_."

"Fuck." Vic hunched his shoulders, trying to reach for some kind of operational calm. Taylor was howling and hiccuping on the ground. The cabin was glowing brightly; bits of the roof were starting to burn.

He didn't have to like what they'd been told to do. The Director had the big picture, and they had their orders. They weren't soldiers, but they were secret agents. They weren't normally assassins. But their division _had_ assassins, Vic played poker with them.

"I'll do it," Li Ann said, standing up. And then she yelped, and nearly fell. Mac caught her.

"Li Ann?" Vic asked, with quick concern.

She grimaced. "My knee. Twisted again, I think. The same one I hurt fighting the clowns. I'm okay, it just doesn't want to take a lot of weight."

Vic took a deep breath, and reminded himself: he was senior, he was the team leader. It didn't come up very often. Normally the three of them worked together as a comfortable collective, all equally under the Director's thumb. The Director apportioned out their tasks according to their strengths, or her whims.

But right now, somebody needed to take charge, take _responsibility_ for what was happening here, and that somebody was going to have to be Vic.

"Mac," Vic said, "Go pick up that body, shove it into the fire." He pointed at the one operative who'd tumbled out of the front door of the cabin. "Li Ann, stay here with Taylor. I'm going to go take care of the perimeter guard."

"You mean you're going to kill him," Mac said, tightly. He looked like he was going to object again, but Li Ann laid a hand on his arm. She didn't say anything, but she _looked_ at him. Mac hunched his shoulders, gritted his teeth—and looked down. Submitting.

Vic walked away.

He knew approximately where the guard was, and he still had the infrared goggles, which made it easy to find the exact right place. When he did, Vic flipped up the goggles and pulled out a flashlight. 

The guard was on the ground, and his hands and feet were indeed securely zip-tied. He said something in Chinese when Vic shone the light in his face, but he sounded groggy.

This wasn't going to get any easier, the longer Vic put it off.

Vic pulled out his gun, ready to fire quickly—but his finger froze.

The man's eyes widened at the sight of the gun. He said something that sounded like pleading.

The wind was strong, and warm out of the south. It smelled like rain coming.

Vic's gun kicked back in his hand, and a black hole opened in the middle of the man's forehead.

* * *

Vic walked back to the burning cabin with the body slung over his shoulder. He threw it through the open doorway, squinting against the punishing heat.

Then he returned to Li Ann, Mac and Taylor. Li Ann was sitting on the ground with one leg stretched out in front of her and the other one bent, holding Taylor on her lap. Taylor was asleep again.

Mac was standing. Shoulders hunched, arms crossed. "We done here?" he asked.

"Yeah," Vic said. "We're done. We'd better go."

* * *

They'd come in Li Ann's car, but Vic had to drive; Mac and Li Ann were both still coughing too much, and Li Ann had the injured knee.

Li Ann sat in the front passenger side with her leg stretched out in front of her. That left Mac in the back with Taylor.

They didn't have a car seat. Mac had put Taylor in the middle of the back bench seat, with the lap belt around her waist, and he held her so that she leaned against him. She was out cold again—she'd woken up briefly and howled some more when they'd disinfected her cut and replaced the giant gunshot dressing with a more appropriate gauze wrapping, but she'd quickly fallen asleep once they started driving. Vic assumed she was still fairly sedated.

It started to rain heavily when they'd been on the road for about ten minutes. Vic flicked on the wipers and switched to the low beams.

Nobody was talking. Mac and Li Ann both coughed pretty frequently, but neither of them seemed to be getting worse, so Vic figured they were probably okay for now.

The wipers swished, the rain spattered against the car. It was four in the morning; they were nearly alone on the road.

"Pull over," Li Ann said suddenly. "I think I'm going to throw up."

"What?" Vic glanced sideways. She was looking pretty green.

He checked his mirrors, cut his speed, and crunched over onto the gravel shoulder. Before the car had even completely stopped, Li Ann was fumbling her seat belt off and opening her door. Vic thought she might just lean out, but she climbed out of the car and stumbled a few steps away before hunching over. In the dark and the heavy rain, Vic couldn't see or hear if she was actually puking.

Mac, meanwhile, had already jumped out of the car and was at Li Ann's side. In the back seat, Taylor slumped sideways without Mac's support, but didn't wake up.

Vic's finger hovered over the switch to trigger the four-way flashers. Sitting on the shoulder of the highway in the middle of the night, he definitely should be turning those on. But if he did, then somebody might stop to help them. That was the last thing they needed.

He killed the lights, instead.

Now it was pitch-dark. He had no idea what was happening outside of the car.

Well, he had guesses.

They'd crossed a line, tonight. Hadn't even seen it coming, and here they were on the other side.

(The perimeter guard on the ground, pleading for his life. The bullet hole in his forehead. His limp weight on Vic's shoulder. His corpse curling up in the fire.)

Li Ann opened the door and thumped wetly back into the passenger seat. "Sorry," she said. "Oh my God it's dark with the lights off."

Vic turned the key, brought the engine and the lights back to life. Mac was climbing into the back seat. Like Li Ann, he was drenched—hair plastered to his head, dripping.

Vic checked the driver's side mirror, looked over his shoulder, and pulled back out onto the highway. "The Director must have had a good reason for telling us to kill them," he said.

Li Ann turned to stare at him, looking confused. "What?"

"He thinks you threw up because of the murder," Mac said, quietly, from the back seat.

"Oh." She leaned back against the headrest and coughed. "No. I think I got a bit of carbon monoxide poisoning from the fire."

Vic blinked. Forced his mind away from the dead guard. "Shit, do you need to get to a hospital?"

"Under ideal circumstances, that would be nice," Li Ann said. "But I think we'd better wait until we've handed Taylor over to the Director, don't you?"

Right. Showing up at a rural hospital in the middle of the night, wearing commando gear and transporting a kidnapped child ... maybe not the best way to keep a low profile.

"Anyway, we're breathing fresh air now," Li Ann pointed out. "We'll be okay." So saying, she rolled her window down about a quarter of the way, and turned her face into the breeze.

_We_, right. "Mac? How are you doing back there?" Vic asked.

"I'm fine," he said, just staring out the window.

Oops—be more specific. "Mac, do you have symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning?"

"Oh. Uh. Headache, nausea. Yeah. Don't think I'm gonna puke, though. From the carbon monoxide or the murder."

Vic clenched his jaw. "It wasn't _murder_. It was a mission, we had orders. We were rescuing a _child_."

"Okay," Mac said, and rolled down his own window—all the way. The sound of rushing wind filled the car, preventing further conversation.

* * *

They reached the abandoned Texaco station a little after six in the morning. It was daylight by then, and still cloudy, but the rain had stopped. Vic pulled them around back of the building, out of sight from the road.

Mac and Li Ann were both in fairly rough shape. In the two hours on the road, Li Ann hadn't stopped coughing. Mac had, but only because he'd fallen asleep for a while. He woke up when the car stopped, and immediately doubled over in a prolonged, painful-sounding fit.

"We've got an hour, maybe, before the Director shows up," Vic said. "Maybe you two should rest. I'll take watch."

"Okay," Li Ann agreed.

Mac shook his head. "I need to stretch my legs."

So they rearranged themselves a bit. Taylor, still asleep, got laid out along the back seat. With Mac out of the space behind her, Li Ann reclined her own seat as far as it would go and closed her eyes.

Vic leaned against the trunk of the car, facing the decrepit station building. Mac took a minute to carefully stretch, and then joined him.

"How's the headache?" Vic asked.

"Better," Mac said. "And the nausea's gone."

"Good." Vic reached over to hold Mac's hand. "I did not enjoy watching that cabin burn with you two still inside it."

"Just another day in the life." Mac withdrew his hand, and hopped up to sit fully on the lid of the trunk. He drew his knees up, rested his chin on them. Coughed. "Only she's never asked us to kill people like that before."

"We kill people all the time," Vic pointed out, an edge in his voice.

"Not like that." Mac shook his head. "We kill when we _have_ to. When people are shooting at us. We don't go in with orders to 'kill them all'. This is fucked up. I didn't run away from the Tangs just to start dealing death for somebody else."

Vic took a slow breath. The air was deliciously fresh, sweet with the scents of wet grass and spruce trees. "You left the Tangs when you found out they were arms dealers. We _stop_ arms dealers. And terrorists. And organ smugglers, human traffickers, kidnappers—"

"Yeah," Mac interrupted. "We rescued the kid. Great. But why'd we have to kill that guard? Vic ... he was _tied up_."

"Uh, 'we' didn't," Vic snapped. "_I_ did. Even though it was _your_ job."

_Shit shit shit shit shit._ Why did he say that? Where the hell had that come from?

Mac was staring at him. "Yeah," he said. "Sorry. I couldn't. I literally couldn't. And right now ... I'm not really sure what to think about the fact that you _could_."

(The kick of the gun against the palm of his hand. The hole in the guard's forehead. His eyes rolling back.)

"I'm not going to apologize for doing my fucking job," Vic gritted out. With an effort, he relaxed his shoulders. "The Director gave us an order. She must have had a good reason for it. And you know—the fact that we normally have Murphy and Camier around to handle the straight-up killing doesn't mean that our hands are _clean_. We're part of an organization. It fights dirty sometimes because that's the only way to win. That's the whole _point_ of the Agency."

"Maybe I was hoping that crossing over to the side of good would be a bit less ambiguous," Mac said.

"Yeah, well." Vic swallowed tightly, and shrugged. "What are you gonna do?"

"Maybe the same thing I did when I realized I couldn't live with what the Tangs were." Mac coughed again, wiped his mouth. "Run."

Vic stared at him. "You're not serious. You can't run from the Agency."

"Why not? Because the Director will hunt me down? Send Murphy and Camier to kill me? Can't be worse than Michael and a dozen Tang soldiers."

Were they really talking about this? Fucking hell, they were really talking about this. Vic felt the world slipping sideways underneath him. "Mac ... what about _me_? And Li Ann?" Even as he said the words, Vic regretted them—because those were very dangerous questions, for the mood that Mac was clearly in right now.

But Mac just shook his head, and coughed. "Never mind," he said. "Forget it." Then he gave up talking and just coughed for a while. Finally he caught his breath. He glanced at the palm of the hand that he'd been covering his mouth with, and made a face. "Eugh." He wiped his hand on his pants.

"Mac?" Vic asked, alarmed. "Was there blood? Are you coughing up blood?"

"Huh? No. It was black. Soot." Mac wrinkled his nose. "I do _not_ want to see the inside of my lungs right now."

"Okay," Vic said, feeling slightly relieved. "Well ... don't wipe it on your pants, that's _gross_."

Mac shrugged, but he did look slightly abashed. "Not like I have a lot of options, here."

Vic rolled his eyes and pulled a packet of tissues out of one of his pockets. Extracted a tissue, held it out to Mac. "Use this next time."

Mac's lips twitched. "Right. Of course you go into combat armed with a cute little tissue packet. Does that have _flowers_ printed on it?"

"Uh huh," Vic said. He was okay with the teasing—the teasing was good. It meant they weren't talking about killing guards (the kick of the gun in his hand) or about running away from everything they knew. Vic forced a grin. "Gotta be prepared. Just in case my partner gets a runny nose..."

Mac gave him the finger, but he took the tissue.

* * *

The crunch of tires on gravel at ten minutes past seven heralded the arrival of ... well, hopefully the Director. The car that rounded the corner of the abandoned station building was unfamiliar, a dull grey Toyota Corolla. Vic kept his hand on his holstered gun until he made out the Director at the wheel. Mac did the same, but didn't lower his hand.

Vic gave Mac a warning look, but headed around the car to wake Li Ann by tapping her shoulder through the open window. She sat up quickly and then doubled over coughing. Vic handed her one of his flowery tissues, preemptively.

The Director and Dobrinsky stepped out of the Corolla. They were both wearing suits and sunglasses. Dobrinsky was holding a couple of thick manila envelopes.

"Taylor's asleep in the back of the car," Vic told them, right off the top.

"Leave her there for the moment," the Director said. "And gather round. I need to give you some very important instructions. Mr. Ramsey, you're not planning to _use_ that, are you?"

Mac dropped the hand that had been resting on his gun—shook out his arms, loosely. "Instructions?" he said. "Aren't we done here?"

The Director shook her head. "Not even close."

Li Ann had been holding back and examining her tissue. She grimaced and crumpled it in her hand before she stepped forward, limping, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mac. He put an arm around her, and she leaned against him.

"Good work retrieving Taylor unharmed," the Director said. "Her parents have been informed of your success, and they're very grateful. Now I need you to bring her to a safe house, and keep her there until this all blows over."

"Keep her—uh, and the parents, right?" Vic asked, suddenly feeling a bit concerned about where this was headed. "We'll be protecting Taylor and her parents?"

"Geneviève and Huang have work to do," the Director said. "Their role in this ... ongoing incident ... requires them to be free to move around. But they need to know that their daughter is safe. And she _will_ be—with you."

"Babysitting?" Vic squeaked. "_That's_ what you're asking us to do now?"

The Director gave him a hard look. "That child is a strategically-important pawn in a deadly international game. You are going to keep her safe. That is your _only_ job, until I contact you and tell you otherwise." She waved a hand towards Dobrinsky, who handed the envelopes over—one to Vic, one to Li Ann.

Vic opened his. There were documents in it—ID cards, passports. The deed to a _house_... "What is this?" he asked.

"Your identities," the Director said. "Li Ann and Mac are the new owners of a bungalow on Key River, and the proud parents of a sweet little two-year-old girl. Vic, the car is yours. I leave it to you to decide how to explain to the neighbours why you all live together."

"What's in the other envelope?" Vic asked. Li Ann had opened it, and she and Mac were peering in with raised eyebrows.

"Cash," Li Ann said.

The Director nodded. "For housekeeping and incidentals."

Mac blinked. "There must be ten grand in there."

"Fifteen," the Director said.

Vic whistled. "That's a lot of incidentals."

Li Ann looked at the Director. "How _long_ are we going to be in hiding for?"

The Director shrugged. "If all goes well? A week or two. If things get complicated, on the other hand ... hm. I promise I won't leave you hanging for more than a year."

"A _year_?" Vic repeated, with a crack in his voice. "Uh, fifteen grand starts to look a bit thin if we're talking about a _year_."

"Well," the Director said, "The IDs are solid. If you run out of money ... try getting a job."

"Oh my God," Mac said, faintly.

"Now, give your phones to Mr. Dobrinsky, please. And let me emphasize: from this moment forward, you are going _dark_. You will have _no_ contact with the Agency, or with anyone from your past lives. The intelligence outfits of _multiple_ national governments may be looking for you, and you _must not be found_." She crossed her arms. "Dobrinsky and I are the only ones who know about this house—he purchased it himself, with untraceable funds. If you keep a low profile, you should be safe. When I'm ready to pull you back in, Dobrinsky or I will come for you in person. If anybody _else_ comes for you—you're blown. Shoot to kill and run like hell."

Vic stared at the Director. "You bit off a little more than you could chew this time, did you?"

She gave him a quelling look. "All you need to do is keep the child safe. I'll worry about the rest."

"There's a box of diapers in the trunk of the Corolla." Dobrinsky added. "Good luck."

"And remember," the Director said, "no matter what happens: this child has parents who love her, and they want her back."

"Um, yeah," Mac said for the three of them, sounding as overwhelmed as Vic felt. "We'll do our best."


	2. Chapter 2

The Corolla had a toddler-appropriate car seat strapped in the back. As soon as they strapped Taylor into it, she woke up and started to cry.

"Now what?" Li Ann asked.

The Director and Dobrinsky had already left, in Li Ann's car. "Does anybody know where Key River is?" Vic asked.

Li Ann shook her head. Mac opened the front passenger side of the Corolla, and pulled something out of the door pocket. A map of Ontario. "Oh yeah, here we go," he said. "They circled it." He frowned. "It's in the middle of fucking _nowhere_."

Vic edged over closer to look. "Well ... maybe forty-five minutes outside of Sudbury. We should be able to get there in an hour and a half."

"We need to do something about what we're wearing," Li Ann pointed out. "If we're supposed to be regular people now..."

"Who _are_ we, anyway?" Mac asked.

Good question. Vic pulled the passports out of the envelope—there were driver's licenses and health cards, too, but the passports were easier to grab—and handed them around, sorting by picture.

"My family name is Xian and I was born in Hong Kong?" Mac said, looking perplexed. "The Director does know I'm _white_, doesn't she?"

"My family name is Xian, too," Li Ann said. "Well, you're my husband, right?" She grinned at him. "I guess you took my name when we got married."

"Oh come on," Mac scoffed. "Like I would've—"

Li Ann interrupted him with a raised eyebrow.

"Okay," he said meekly. "Yeah, I would've."

"What are your first names?" Vic asked. "I'm Viktor, but with a 'k'."

"Leanne, spelled the anglo way," Li Ann said.

"Macdonald," Mac read off his passport.

"That's a _last_ name," Vic objected.

Mac gave a wry grin. "Call me 'Mac' for short."

"_Is_ Mac short for something?" Vic asked.

"Not that I know of," Mac shrugged. "Not like I've ever seen my birth certificate."

"Taylor's still Taylor," Li Ann said. "Born in Vancouver, so I guess we must've lived there for a while." She flipped back to her own passport. "Actually I was born in Vancouver too."

"Calgary," Vic read off his own passport. "Okay, great. We can worry about the details later. Right now, we need..." So many things. A full night of sleep, a pot of coffee, a rewind of the last twelve hours (the kick of the gun)—he shook himself. "Food." Taylor was still crying; she'd be hungry, thirsty, scared.

"The gear," Li Ann reminded him. She spread her arms. "We can't go walking around like this." The guns, the bulletproof vests, the radios.

Mac went over and popped the trunk, and pulled up the lining. "We can pack it all around the spare tire. Just try not to get stopped by the highway patrol, 'kay Vic?"

Right, Vic was still going to have to do the driving. He was exhausted—but Mac wasn't making it longer than half a minute between coughing fits, and Li Ann had the coughing _and_ the injured knee.

Speaking of which—"Actually, maybe we should look for a medical clinic first," Vic suggested. "You guys really don't sound good."

Li Ann paused in the middle of disarming to shake her head. "Too risky. We show up with smoke-inhalation injuries a few hours after a cabin burns down with six bullet-riddled bodies inside? We can't have anybody connecting us with that."

"Anyway, the soot's coming out on its own," Mac added. He emphasized the point by raising his grey, crumpled tissue to his mouth and coughing some more.

"Mmm," Vic murmured. He wasn't exactly reassured, but Li Ann had a point. "What about your knee?" he asked her.

She shifted her weight carefully. "I don't think it's as bad as last time. I _can_ put weight on it, I just don't want to. I'd like to wrap it before we get moving—Mac, could you get the first aid kit out for me?" They'd transferred it from Li Ann's car before the Director and Dobrinsky had driven away.

So they did what they could to make themselves look normal. The combat gear all went in the trunk. When Li Ann and Mac were removing their bullet-proof vests, Vic noticed with belated alarm that they'd each caught several shots in the torso, back and front. "Jesus," he said, pulling up Mac's undershirt to check the bruising. "That was close, huh?" He tried to kiss Mac, but Mac turned his face away, and Vic's lips just brushed his jaw. Vic almost asked if something was wrong, but he stopped himself.

Yes. Things were wrong. (The guard's pleading eyes.) But it wasn't something Vic could deal with right now.

"You guys had better clean the smoke off your faces," Vic said, and handed Li Ann a fresh tissue. "I think I should change Taylor's diaper before we get going." It had been a long time since he'd changed a diaper, but he was sure he remembered how.

* * *

Vic drove them into the nearby town, and drove around until he found a mom & pop diner with an 'Open' sign in its window. Taylor howled the whole time. Mac, sitting next to her, just kept looking at her like she was a bomb that might go off.

"Okay," Vic said as he turned the engine off. "You're married. She's your daughter. I'm your ... friend, I guess?"

"We don't need our whole life stories mapped out," Li Ann said. "We're just getting breakfast."

"People out in the sticks are _friendly_," Vic said. "It's not like the city."

"We can improvise," Mac said. "We're highly-trained secret agents." He got out of the car and went to open Li Ann's door for her.

"No," Vic said, in a hushed tone since the door was open, even though they were alone in the parking lot, "We're not agents, we're _normal people_. And Mac, you should carry Taylor. She's supposed to be your kid."

"Uh, I have to help Li Ann," Mac said. "Who's supposed to be my _wife_." He quirked a grin at Li Ann. "Gosh, I've missed being fake-married to you."

She rolled her eyes but accepted his clasped-arm grip and his lift out of the car. "Yeah, it went so well the last time."

Vic decided not to press the point. It was true, Li Ann would need somebody to lean on. He opened the rear driver-side door and extracted Taylor from the car seat. She went rigid, howling furiously. "Shhh, kid," he said. "Uh, Taylor. Sweetie." He propped her on his hip and shut the car door with his butt.

How long had it been since he'd last lugged around a tantruming two-year-old? Fifteen solid years. The muscle memory came right back, though.

Of course Taylor, under the circumstances, had far more legitimate reasons to scream than Alice ever had. Vic just hoped that she didn't have enough vocabulary to blow their cover. Maybe this whole eating-out thing was a bad idea. Shit.

But Li Ann and Mac were already entering the diner.

Vic followed them in. The waitress approached them, her smile turning sympathetic as she took in the howling toddler. She was a slender woman in her fifties, with tanned skin and a bottle-blonde perm. "You folks go ahead and settle yourselves in a booth. I'll bring you a high chair. Can I bring you some coffee, to start?"

"Yes, please," Vic said emphatically, pitching his voice to carry over Taylor's screams.

They settled themselves into a booth—Mac helped Li Ann in first and then slid in next to her, leaving the other side for Vic. Vic felt a little worried ping in the back of his head, putting that together with the brushed-off kiss earlier.

Okay, maybe Mac was a little mad at him. (Mac had no _right_ to be mad at him. Vic had only been following the Director's orders. Mac was supposed to have done it, and then Vic had had to do it _for_ him. Fuck. Stop thinking about it.) But also, Mac and Li Ann really did have to pretend to be married, so for as long as they were undercover and in public, Vic was going to have to get used to this.

The waitress brought the high chair and placed it at the end of their table. "Here you go. I'm Linda, by the way. The hash browns are on special this morning. Would your little girl like some milk?"

"Ah, yeah," Vic said, even though the milk question had clearly been directed at Li Ann. "With a straw, please." He had his doubts about whether Taylor would be willing to calm down enough to eat or drink anything, but it was worth a shot.

They made their choices from the simple menu, and Linda disappeared into the back. There was just one other customer in the diner at the moment—a large white man dressed in a t-shirt and jeans and a Blue Jays hat, working his way through a plate of eggs and bacon. Linda had seated them at the booth farthest from his, on the opposite wall—which Vic supposed was a courtesy to the man, given the screaming toddler.

It was highly unlikely that the man was an agent of the Chinese government. Probably not Russian, either. Vic forced himself to relax.

Linda came back with the milk for Taylor, in a small glass with a straw. "Here you go, dear," she said, handing it to Vic. "I'll be right back with the coffee. Are you going to be wanting milk or cream?"

"Ah, cream, milk, black," Vic said, pointing at himself, Li Ann and Mac in sequence. "Thanks."

Linda headed off, and Vic tried putting the milk glass on the tray of the high chair. "Taylor," he said, singsong. "Want some milk?"

She swatted angrily at the glass. Vic was ready for that—this wasn't his first rodeo. He'd never actually let go of the glass, and he moved it quickly and safely out of the way of her pudgy fist.

That, amazingly, got a reaction. She caught her breath and glared at him for a moment before screaming even louder than before.

"Maybe later," Vic said mildly, and set the milk down on the table, out of her reach.

"Oh my God, are they always this loud?" Li Ann murmured.

Vic didn't dignify that with a response, because Linda was already on her way back with the coffee.

Meanwhile, Mac was having a coughing fit into a napkin. Both Li Ann and Mac had been trying to suppress their coughs since they'd come into the diner, but Mac was currently losing that battle.

"Nasty cough you've got there," Linda said, serving out the coffee. She looked sympathetic, but also a bit leery.

"Uh, yeah, they've been sick for over a week," Vic jumped in quickly. "Definitely on the mend by now. Not contagious anymore."

"Well, that's a relief," Linda said, with an easy public-service smile. "Summer colds are just the worst, aren't they? Let me guess—the kid picked it up in playgroup and gave it to Mom and Dad? I've been down that road plenty of times, let me tell you. The little ones, they bounce back in a few days, and meanwhile you're miserable for _weeks_."

"Playgroup," Li Ann repeated, smiling a bit blankly. "Yes, that was it."

"Do you have kids, Linda?" Vic jumped in quickly, because he was pretty sure that Li Ann or Mac trying to make small talk about parenting would lead very quickly to disaster.

Of course Linda had kids. Three of them, and the youngest one was in medical school down in Toronto, could you believe it, it seemed like just yesterday Linda had been patching up her skinned knees. The oldest one had a kid of her own, just about Taylor's age ("How old is that sweet little girl, anyway?"), so Linda was a proud grandma. As for the middle one, well, life was just more of a struggle for some folks, wasn't it, but he was out of rehab and working on a road crew for the summer.

Mac gave Vic a moderately impressed look when Linda finally headed off again. "Nice interrogation," he remarked. "I think she was about to give you her home address and social insurance number."

Vic shrugged. "People with kids like talking to other people with kids about their kids. Same thing happens with dogs."

"When have you ever had a dog?" Li Ann asked, giving him a curious look.

"I walked my neighbour's dog sometimes when I was a teenager," Vic said, taking a bite of hash browns.

"When have you ever had a _kid_?" Mac asked.

Actually, that question did have an answer. "I used to babysit my sister a lot," Vic said. "She's twenty years younger than me, so when I went out with her, people usually thought she was mine. I didn't always bother to correct them."

"Ah," Li Ann said, looking enlightened. "That explains the diaper-changing."

"The diaper-changing needs an explanation?"

"It was a slick operation," Mac said. "You definitely showed a surprising level of expertise."

Actually it had been an awkward, fumbling affair, trying to deal with flailing toddler limbs on the back seat of the car. Fortunately she'd only been wet. He hadn't had any supplies other than his package of tissues; Dobrinsky and the Director had only provided them with a box of diapers, nothing like baby wipes or cream. Vic supposed he'd been lucky to get the diapers—he suspected that neither the Director nor Dobrinsky had any more first-hand experience with babies than, presumably, Mac or Li Ann had. "Yeah, that reminds me," Vic said. "We're going to need to pick up some baby things as soon as we get out of here."

"And some other things," Li Ann mentioned. "We're wearing the only clothes we've got." Which for Vic, Mac and Li Ann consisted of black tank tops and cargo pants, and for Taylor consisted of the duck pyjamas, slightly blood-stained.

Vic nodded. "Right." The brutal night-time battle had been only four hours ago, but it already felt like a troubling dream. The day ahead of them felt like a weird dream, too. Shopping for baby stuff, Jesus. No part of this resembled what Vic thought of as his life.

Then he suddenly realized that they weren't half-shouting to hear themselves over Taylor anymore. Her sobs had trailed off to hiccups.

When he looked at her, she looked at him. "Wan mehk," she said, pointing towards the out-of-reach milk.

Vic grabbed the milk but didn't hand it to her. "Say 'I want milk _please_'." It was sheer habitual reflex, and if he'd thought before he'd spoken he wouldn't have done it. This kid had had a _very_ rough night, and he really didn't want her to immediately start screaming again.

She didn't, though. She looked at him suspiciously, but obediently and emphatically said "_Peese_," and held out her hand.

Vic put the milk in her reach but didn't let go of it. She put her lips to the straw and drained a quarter of the glass.

"Wow," Mac said. "Vic. This is a whole new side of you."

"I think it's very sweet," Li Ann said, giving Vic an approving look.

"Pretty sharp turn-around from last night," Mac added, tightly.

Vic felt a shot of adrenaline (the guard's eyes, the hole in his forehead) and had to put the milk glass down so that he wouldn't drop it. He clenched his fists and put them in his lap.

"Ow," Mac yelped. Li Ann had definitely just kicked him under the table.

"Oh good, somebody's happier now," Linda chirped, having just approached the table with the pot of coffee to offer refills.

"Yes," Li Ann said smoothly, smiling easily at Linda. "And thanks so much for your patience."

"Oh, I remember the terrible twos," Linda said. "Don't worry about it."

* * *

They _almost_ made it out without further incident. Taylor drank the rest of the milk and ate a few hash browns. Vic and his partners finished their breakfasts and drained their second cups of coffee. Mac and Li Ann mostly managed to suppress their 30-year, pack-a-day hacking while Linda was nearby, and in any case deftly managed their napkins so that even Vic caught no glimpses of whatever they were coughing up.

Then, when their bill was paid and they were standing up to go, Vic picked Taylor up out of the high chair and she said, loudly, "Taytay wan Mama!"

"Aw," said Linda sympathetically, looking up from putting their money in the cash register, "There's no substitute for Mommy, is there?"

Vic froze; so did Li Ann.

Mac had been subtly supporting Li Ann with an arm around her waist and a hand on her elbow. Now he shifted his hold and moved Li Ann's arm up to his shoulders, making it very obvious that he was helping her walk. "Sorry Taytay," he called out. "Mommy hurt her knee last night, and she can't carry you."

"Wan _Mama_, wan _Baba_," Taylor wailed, and started to cry again.

Linda gave them a rueful wave. "Good luck with the rest of your day!"

* * *

They didn't say anything else until they were all back in the car, driving, with the windows up.

Li Ann spoke first. "Oh my _God_. This kid is going to blow our cover. She _knows_ we're not her parents."

"_Mama_," Taylor wailed from the back seat. "_Baba_."

"Mama and Bàba have to work," Mac said to Taylor, putting on a false-cheerful tone that Vic usually only heard him use when he was being sarcastic. "So we're going to play _pretend_ for a while. Let's pretend that Li Ann is your mommy and I'm your daddy and Vic is your super-nice uncle who actually knows how to take care of you."

"There is no way she followed all that," Vic pointed out. "Also, I think she's saying 'papa'. 'Baba' means grandmother."

Li Ann shook her head. "Bàba means Daddy in Mandarin and Cantonese."

"_Baba_," Taylor wailed again. "_Mamaaaaa_." Sobbing.

"Mommy," Mac said. Glancing in the rear-view mirror, Vic saw that Mac was pointing at Li Ann. "Daddy," Mac said, pointing at himself.

"Uh, this is kind of creepy, actually," Vic said. "Don't you think? I mean, sure she's only two, but she's a real person. We can't just _trick_ her into thinking that you're her parents."

"I'm not trying to trick her into thinking we're her parents," Mac said, "I'm trying to convince her that our names are Mommy and Daddy." He pointed at Li Ann again. "Mommy. Can you say 'Mommy', Taytay?"

"_Mamaaaa_," she sobbed.

"I still think it's creepy," Vic said.

"Well, we've got to do it," Li Ann said. "If we're going to keep her safe."

"Yeah, about that," Mac said, sitting back. "_Are_ we keeping her safe? Or are we holding her hostage?"

"What?" Vic frowned at him in the rear-view mirror. "What the hell are you talking about, Mac? Obviously we're keeping her safe."

"I mean, okay, yes, we're keeping her safe, in the sense that we're not going to hurt her on purpose and you're going to change her diapers and make sure she gets fed," Mac said.

"We're _all_ going to change her diapers and make sure she gets fed," Vic murmured, as an important clarification.

"But have you thought about who put that tracker in her, that you cut out of her last night?"

"Um." Vic hadn't, really. There'd been a lot of other things happening.

"Her _parents_, obviously. That's how they knew where she'd been taken—how they knew where to send us. And now, no more tracker. Only the Director and Dobrinsky know where the safe house is. You think they're going to tell Geneviève and Huang?"

"If we hadn't removed the tracker," Li Ann said, "_anybody_ could've traced the signal, as long as they knew to look for it."

"The Chinese agents didn't know about it," Mac pointed out. "Or they would've removed it the same way we did."

"But once we found her so quickly, they'd have to suspect _some_ kind of tracker," Li Ann said.

"Okay, sure. Maybe," Mac conceded. "But I'm just saying—think about it. Geneviève and Huang are some kind of top-secret surveillance experts. The Chinese want them. The Russians want them. The Americans want them. But you know who's got them? The Director."

"She's the only one who can give them their kid back," Li Ann said, quietly. 

"Shit." Vic squeezed the steering wheel. "_No_, you guys, I can't believe—"

"That she would do something like that?" Mac interrupted, quietly.

(You need to kill that last guard.)

"So what do _you_ think we should do?" Vic snapped. "Drive back to Toronto and hand Taylor over to her parents ourselves? We don't even know where they are. They're probably going dark too. Jesus Christ, they've got Chinese _commandos_ after them."

"So we'll just do what she tells us to. Who cares if it's the right thing or not."

Vic's knuckles had gone all white on the wheel. "I'm saying it's the _only_ thing we can do. The Director has the big picture. She makes the calls."

Li Ann wrenched around in her seat so that she could look at Mac directly. "Remember the last thing the Director said to us. 'No matter what happens, this child has parents who love her, and they want her back.' _Yes_, she might be using Taylor as leverage in some way. She probably is. But I still believe that she intends to get her back to her parents as soon as it's safe."

"Maybe." Mac hunched forward. Coughed quietly. "But maybe we should all do some thinking about when we have choices, and when we don't."

"Wan Ma_maaaaaaa_," Taylor wailed, and they drove on.


	3. Chapter 3

They finally pulled up in front of the Key River bungalow just before eleven in the morning.

It was on a short gravel road off the highway. There were only two other houses on the road; the safe house stood in the middle of the three, at a distance of about 50 meters from each of its neighbours. The river ran behind the houses, barely visible from the road.

"The road isn't _paved_." Mac sounded stunned. "I thought roads were _paved_ in Canada."

"Vancouver and Toronto are not exactly typical parts of Canada," Vic said, pulling into the driveway. "Most of it's wilderness."

The house looked like it was in good repair, at least. It had yellow aluminum siding and blue shutters, and a little stone path led from the driveway to the front door.

Mac was already helping Li Ann out of the car. Taylor had fallen asleep in her car seat about forty minutes ago; Vic decided not to wake her up quite yet. They had a lot of guns to move into the house, as well as a couple of bags full of baby supplies.

"Hey Vic, do you have a key?" Li Ann called back to him.

"Don't worry, I'll just pick the lock," Mac said. "Anybody got a hairpin?"

"What?" Vic looked up. "Mac, it's _our house_. And none of us use hairpins." He held up the key ring that the Director had given him, which the car key was also on. "I think it's this one here."

When he opened the front door, they all stared inside in dismay.

"Why isn't there any furniture?" Mac asked. "Agency places always have furniture. _My_ place came with furniture."

"Yeah, that explains a lot about your decor," Vic mentioned, walking in. His steps echoed on the bare wooden floor. "Well, look, at least there are appliances." The fridge was dark and standing open, but when Vic plugged it in it whirred to life. "Okay, we'd better move everything in."

The guns and commando gear got shut in the closet of the second bedroom. The baby stuff went in the middle of the floor of the first bedroom. And ... that was everything they had. The only store open in Huntsville had been the pharmacy, since it was Canada Day. They hadn't even managed to get any spare clothes yet.

Taylor reacted to being woken up again with a bit of desultory weeping, but once she was released in the house with a sippy cup full of water, she started running from room to room, squealing with laughter.

"_That's_ all it takes to get her to forget her parents?" Li Ann asked in an undertone, watching Taylor run across the large space that was probably meant to be the dining room and living room. The walls in this area were painted yellow, similar to the outside of the house, but the first bedroom was baby blue and the second was a pale green.

"Shhh," Vic said. "Don't remind her."

"Okay, seriously, now what?" Mac asked, looking around. "What do we _do_?"

Vic suppressed a groan. "I don't know. Um, maybe something's open up in Sudbury? But that's another hour of driving. Each way. If I try to do that right now, I'm going to fall asleep and crash us into a tree. Can you two watch Taylor while I have a nap?"

"What do you mean 'watch Taylor'?" Mac asked, looking wary.

"_Watch_ her," Vic repeated. "Supervise her. Oversee her. Uh, is something not clicking here?"

"It's a completely empty house," Mac said. "Can't she just run around?"

"She's _two_. She needs an adult with her at all times." Vic scraped the heel of his hand across his forehead, rubbing at the start of a headache.

Mac shook his head, apparently perplexed. "To do what?"

Mac wasn't being difficult on purpose, Vic reminded himself. He'd probably never looked after a child in his life. And neither had Li Ann. "Um, play with her. See if she wants to eat any of that baby food we got. Change her diaper if she needs it." Vic thought about that one for a second. "No, scratch that. If her diaper needs changing, wake me up. You need somebody to show you how to do it the first time." The last thing Taylor needed was a urinary tract infection.

"Okay," Mac said, looking daunted. "So, what, are you just going to sleep on the floor?"

"Do you see anywhere else to sleep?" Vic asked, rhetorically.

"Mmm," Li Ann said, in a vaguely negative way, lowering herself carefully down to sit with her back resting against the wall. She kept her right leg stretched out straight in front of her. "Sweet dreams, Vic. We'll handle the kid."

* * *

Vic woke from a deep sleep to the sound of a doorbell ringing. He had a moment of disoriented confusion (why was he sleeping on a _floor_? where the hell was he?), followed by adrenaline-surging terror (how had anybody found them so _fast_?), followed by the reassuring realization that a commando hit squad probably wouldn't actually ring the doorbell.

Still, he was on his feet with a gun in his hand before he'd even rolled the crick out of his neck. (He'd been sleeping against the door of the closet full of guns because he did not, in fact, trust Mac to be a very attentive babysitter.)

He peeked around the bedroom doorway. He could see straight to the front entrance, where Li Ann was just opening the door. Mac was hiding off to the side, in a good position for a surprise attack when whoever it was stepped into the house, except that Mac was also holding Taylor. 

"Hello!" It was a woman at the door. Thin, not quite as tall as Li Ann, with greying black hair tied up in a bun. She was wearing denim coveralls that were spattered all over with flecks of white and grey, and she had a loaf of bread in her hands. "I hope I'm not disturbing you. I saw your car earlier, and I thought, _finally_, somebody's moved into Ethel's place. I was just baking bread, and I thought I'd bring you a loaf as a housewarming gift."

"And you are...?" Li Ann said. Vic could easily imagine her slightly awkward, wary smile.

"Oh my goodness, sorry!" the woman laughed. "I should have led with that! I'm next door on your left. Patricia, but you can call me Pat."

Vic could see the subtle hand-sign that Li Ann sent Mac: stand down, it's okay. Mac immediately moved further away from the door, and then out from the wall and back towards the door so that from Pat's point of view, he would seem to be causally and naturally approaching. "Hi!" he said. "I just caught the end of that. Pat, from next door! Nice to meet you. I'm Mac." He propped Taylor on his hip—as though he'd been doing it for years—and held out a hand for Pat to shake. Taylor, for her part, just clung to Mac and scrunched a hand through his hair. 

Vic wondered, for a disoriented moment, _how_ long he'd slept. It must have been a week, for Taylor and Mac to have warmed up to each other like that.

"Taytay, say hi to Pat from next door!" Mac went on brightly.

Taylor lifted her hand from Mac's hair and made an open-close motion that approximated a wave. Pat grinned at her. "Nice to meet you, Taytay. Aren't you just as cute as a button."

"And I'm Li Ann," Li Ann added a little belatedly. "Um, would you like to come in?"

Quickly, Vic retreated back into the bedroom. He checked the safety on his gun and then stuck it in a pocket of his cargo pants.

"My goodness, this place is empty," Pat was saying. "Is your furniture going to be getting here soon?"

"Actually we don't have any furniture," Mac said. "We just drove here from Vancouver. We were renting a furnished place there, so we figured we'd buy stuff when we got here." He turned at the sound of Vic's approaching footsteps. "Oh, hey Vic. Pat, this is our friend Vic. He lives with us."

Well, that was nice and ambiguous. Vic tried for a friendly, non-threatening smile. "Nice to meet you."

Pat, meanwhile, was looking slightly dismayed. "You don't have _any_ furniture? How are you going to sleep tonight?"

"Weeeell," Mac said, "that's a bit of a problem. We didn't realize we'd be arriving on Canada Day."

"Oh, you poor things," Pat said. "And here you've just driven straight across the country, with a _baby_. Well, I could lend you our camping things. We only have a couple of sleeping bags and the pads to go under them, but it's better than nothing. It's warm enough, you could open them out all the way and sleep side by side."

"That would be _great_," Mac said, giving her his big puppy-dog grin.

"And what are you going to do for supper?" Pat asked, looking perturbed all over again. From where she was standing, she could easily see across the breakfast bar into their stark, empty kitchen.

Well, that was a good question. "I guess we'll order pizza," Vic said.

Pat shook her head. "There's nobody who delivers out this way. And you'd probably have to drive all the way to Sudbury to find a restaurant that's open today. Tell you what—why don't you come over to my place for supper? I was planning to pull a lasagne out of the freezer anyway, so there'll be plenty to go around."

"Ah, no," Vic managed to say hastily enough to cut off the 'yes' that Mac was obviously about to give. Mac loved meeting people and eating food, _of course_ he was going to say yes, but they were _so_ not ready for an up-close-and-personal extended dinner conversation with their new neighbours. They hadn't even trained Taylor to call Li Ann and Mac 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' yet. "Thanks, but—"

"We're really tired," Li Ann cut in. "It was _such_ a long drive. And Mac and I are getting over terrible colds." To emphasize the point, she turned away to cough, pulling a tissue out of her pocket to cover her mouth. She really sounded terrible. Vic thought she was playing it up a bit on purpose, this time. She must have drawn the same conclusions about the risks of dinner that he had.

"Yeah." Mac smiled weakly; he clearly realized that his hand had been forced. "Taytay picked up the bug at playgroup. They're amazing little germ factories, aren't they?"

"So I've heard," Pat said, giving Taylor a bit of a leery glance. "I never had any kids, myself."

Bullet dodged. But this still left them with the problem of what they actually _would_ eat for dinner. "Is there a convenience store in the area somewhere that might be open?" Vic asked, hopefully.

"Not really," Pat said. "Well, maybe the Petro-Can station? It's about thirty klicks down the road. They're probably open. I don't think they have much in the way of food, though."

"We'll get by," Vic assured her. "It's just till tomorrow. And we'll really appreciate those sleeping bags, if you can lend them to us."

"It's no problem at all; I'll go get them right now," she said. She handed Vic the loaf of bread, and headed out.

Mac, meanwhile, had started coughing too—maybe in sympathy with Li Ann. He'd had to put Taylor down, and she'd gone running off towards the empty kitchen.

"You two sound awful," Vic observed when both of his partners had finally caught their breath. "Is it getting better, or worse?" He glanced at his watch; it was nearly four-thirty in the afternoon. He'd slept on the floor for five hours. No wonder he felt stiff.

Li Ann made a face and examined her tissue. "My chest hurts more, but the phlegm isn't as black as it was this morning."

"I really wish you could go to a doctor," Vic said—pointlessly, because the reason they hadn't this morning still applied. Then he glanced around to see where Taylor had gotten to.

She wasn't in sight.

"Shit, excuse me." He dashed towards the back of the house.

Of _course_ she'd gone straight for the room with the closet full of guns. It was the room she'd been shut out of for the past five hours.

He picked her up one-handed—loaf of bread still in the other hand—and carried her back out to the living room. She immediately started to howl.

"Uh, guys?" Vic said. "I think we should move the guns into the high kitchen cupboards."

"Oh, good idea," Mac said. "They'll be more accessible there when somebody comes to the door."

"Sure," Vic agreed, "but actually I was thinking of how they'd be _less_ accessible to Taylor."

Li Ann frowned. "That's a good point. We're really not going to be able to leave guns lying around at _all_, are we?"

"Nope," Vic said, struggling to maintain his one-handed grip on the squirming, screaming object of the current discussion. "We really aren't."

* * *

Pat rang the doorbell again five minutes later, with a tottering armful of supplies. "The sleeping bags and pads," she said, handing them over. "And I'm lending you a few pillows, too. Sorry I only had three spares."

"It's great," Mac said, taking them from her. "We'll be _so_ much more comfortable tonight, thanks to you."

"Well, I'm happy to help out," she said. "And if you realize that you need anything else, you can just pop over. If I'm not in the house, I'm probably in the studio out back."

"Oh, you're an artist?" Li Ann asked, sounding interested.

"Potter," Pat said. Which explained the whitish splashes all over her dungarees. "You should come by sometime and see my work! Your little girl could even try making a pot."

"I'd like that," Li Ann declared, with a smile. "After we've settled in."

"Of course. I'm sure you're all exhausted right now. I'll leave you be." She turned to go, and then stopped, pursing her lips. "Oh—just one other thing. Sonny, your neighbour on the other side—I think he's planning a party tonight. I saw some people arriving when I was walking over here. You'll want to steer clear of that."

"Why's that?" Vic asked.

Pat looked slightly pained. "I don't like to speak ill of folks," she said. "But let's just say that he has the sorts of friends that you'd be better off avoiding."

"Okay," Vic said, putting a hand on the door to gently usher her out. "Thanks for the tip."

* * *

They shared the small loaf of bread, standing around the breakfast bar and tearing off pieces with their fingers. It was delicious, but it barely took the edge off of Vic's hunger.

Taylor accepted a few bites and then ran away, careening through the empty house. "She ate one of those baby-food jars an hour or so ago," Mac mentioned. "The, um, strained peas."

"I could go for some strained peas right now," Li Ann muttered.

"I'll go find that gas station," Vic offered. "They must have _some_ kind of food. Snacks, at least. We can drive up to Sudbury tomorrow and get proper supplies. Will you two be okay watching Taylor for a while longer?"

"We've managed this far," Mac pointed out. "It's actually not that hard."

Vic smirked. "Well, if you're looking for a _challenge_—how about I teach you how to change a diaper, before I go?"

* * *

It took the better part of an hour for Vic to drive to the Petro-Canada station and back again. But at least he had a bag full of food—beef jerky, nuts, potato chips and soda crackers.

He noticed, pulling into the driveway, that Pat had been right about the neighbour's Canada Day party. There were, wow, something like sixty vehicles out front now—in the driveway, on the lawn, and spilling out along the gravel road in both directions. Over half of them were motorbikes. Two more bikers arrived just as Vic was pulling in—a man and a woman on matching Harleys. As soon as he got out of the Corolla, Vic could hear a thumping bass line—he guessed it was coming from Sonny's backyard.

"It's me, I'm back!" he called as he opened the safe house door, to let Mac and Li Ann know that they weren't being invaded by Chinese (or Russian, or American) commandos.

Silence.

"Hello?" he called. He went and put the bag of snacks on the breakfast bar. His hand edged towards the place at his side where his holster wasn't. He thought about the guns in the high kitchen cupboard.

Maybe Mac and Li Ann had taken Taylor to check out Pat's pottery studio. If the four of them walked back through the door and Vic was holding a gun, it would be pretty hard to explain.

But there's always time for explanations, if you're alive.

He opened the cupboard and grabbed the closest gun to hand—Mac's P-10.

The bathroom was clear. Blue bedroom—clear, including the closet. Green bedroom—same. Nobody, no sign of a struggle. A bit of a stink in the blue bedroom did hint of a productive diaper change; in his second glance around the room Vic registered a tied-off plastic shopping bag tossed in the corner, which looked like it contained the used diaper and wipes.

Garbage cans. Yet another thing that they didn't have, and would need to get.

Resting his finger parallel to the trigger guard and keeping the muzzle pointed at the ceiling, Vic carefully tried the back door. It was unlocked. He peeked around the edge of the door, not quite stepping out onto the back porch.

A Canada Day party was indeed in full swing over at Sonny's place. A narrow stand of fir trees separated the safe house's yard from Sonny's. Vic could hear the music clearly now—he recognized Aerosmith—and he could smell barbecue.

He ducked back inside before anyone could see him. Engaged the safety, tucked the gun into one of the vecro-flap pockets of the cargo pants. Walked back out, casual on the surface but very, very careful. He strolled across the yard.

It looked like a pretty typical backyard party. Two barbecues stood side by side on the back porch, tended by a heavily tattooed bald guy in a red apron. People stood around chatting and eating, on the porch and all around the yard, which sloped gently down about forty metres to the river's edge. There were clusters of lawn chairs, too, and Vic quickly spotted Li Ann sitting in one—her right leg was stretched out in front of her on a plastic footstool.

Vic relaxed, fractionally. If Li Ann was lounging in a lawn chair, Mac and Taylor were probably fine too. But what the hell were they doing at Sonny's sketchy party?

He crossed the fir tree stand—which he guessed marked the property line—and came up on Li Ann from behind. "Hey," he said.

She looked up over her shoulder and grinned. "Oh, hi Vic." She had a red plastic cup of beer in one hand, and a half-eaten hot dog in the other. She waved the hot dog at the two tanned, blonde women who were sitting in a little circle with her. "Buffy, Sarah, this is my friend Vic, who lives with me."

"Hi Vic," one of them—Buffy?—said in a friendly-casual way. She was wearing a blue halter top, and Vic could see that she had a downward-pointing dagger tattooed between her breasts. "You should go get something to eat."

"Yeah, sure," Vic said. He leaned over Li Ann's chair. "Where are Mac and Taylor?"

"I don't know." Li Ann didn't bother to lower her voice the way Vic had. "Around? I'm sure they're fine. Last time I saw them, Mac was feeding Taylor a hamburger."

Vic's stomach growled. He grimaced, and ignored it. "I'll look for them."

He found Mac standing in a cluster of men, down by the river's edge. Mac was managing a red cup and a styrofoam plate of potato salad with one hand, and in the other held a burger with just one bite out of it. The men were mostly burly and tattooed, with one skinny tattooed exception. "Mac," Vic bit out, managing not to shout, "_Where's Taylor?_"

Mac raised an eyebrow, casually, as though it were a surprising but not particularly concerning question. "She's with the kids."

"_Where_?" Vic repeated. It came out half an octave higher than he intended.

"I think Hayley has them up around the side of the house," one of the burley tattooed guys said.

"Up around ... okay. Come _on_, Mac," Vic said, and grabbed Mac by the elbow.

"Uh, bye!" Mac said to his new friends, with a little wave. "Catch you later."

"What are you _doing_ here?" Vic hissed as they walked up the slope.

"Eating," Mac said. "Getting to know the neighbours."

"Pat told us to stay _away_ from Sonny's party," Vic reminded him.

"So?" Mac said. "Pat's nice, but we just met her."

Vic glanced around to make sure that nobody was in earshot. "Mac, I think they're _bikers_."

"Yeah, duh," Mac said. "But don't worry, they're not white supremacist bikers. They're drug-dealing bikers." Then he started coughing, and had to stop walking for a moment.

Vic winced. "I really don't understand," he said when Mac stopped coughing, "why you put 'don't worry' at the start of that sentence."

"Well, I thought you might be having Dog Pack flashbacks," Mac said.

"And how exactly do you know," Vic asked, "that they're _drug-dealing_ bikers?"

"They offered to sell me some pot," Mac said. And then, clearly in response to Vic's pained look, "I said no!"

"You brought Taylor," Vic gritted out, "to a party thrown by a drug-dealing _biker gang_."

"I think Sonny's semi-retired," Mac said. And then he lowered his voice. "Anyway, I don't know why you're freaking out like a suburban housewife. _We_ are way more fucking dangerous than anybody at this party. And you're the only guy who brought a gun to the yard."

Vic gave his pocket a guilty, reflexive pat. "I got spooked when I found the house empty."

"Yeah, well, remember we're supposed to be _normal_ people now. Like, try to pretend you haven't killed anybody today."

Vic stopped in his tracks and couldn't quite breathe for a moment. (The kick of the gun. The guard's pleading eyes.) Mac kept walking up the slope—_stalking_, rather, and he was scowling. But then he had to stop and cough again, so Vic caught up to him.

Anyway, by then they'd rounded the corner of the house, bringing the pack of kids into view.

There were about eight of them, ranging in age from preschooler to ten-ish, watched over by a gangly pre-teen. They were gathered along the edge of the house, drawing with coloured chalk on the concrete foundation. And there was Taylor in the middle of them, scribbling intently with big, full-armed strokes.

She was stark naked.

"Mac," Vic said through clenched teeth, "Why is she naked?"

Mac had to stop coughing and catch his breath before he could answer. He still sounded a little wheezy when he spoke. "We couldn't get a new diaper on her. She wouldn't hold still."

Vic pinched the bridge of his nose, wincing. "She weighs _thirty pounds_. There were _two_ of you."

Mac shrugged. "We figured it didn't matter, since we were going outdoors. She seemed happier like this."

Vic hunched his shoulders. Clenched and unclenched his fists. Took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "I'll put a new one on her."

He went over to the cluster of kids and picked Taylor up. She immediately took a deep breath and started to howl. Vic gave an awkward grin to the girl who'd been watching the kids. "Thanks for the babysitting," he said.

Taylor spotted Mac. "Wan _Daddeeeeee_," she wailed, waving towards him.

Vic stared at her. Stared at Mac.

Mac gave him a quirked grin and a little shrug, and held out his hands. Which were, of course, full of food.

"Uh..." Vic said, drawing nearer to him. And then Mac popped his hamburger into Vic's open mouth.

"Hold that for a second," Mac said, and held out his free hand to Taylor. "Come here, Taytay."

She practically dove from Vic's arms into Mac's. Mac caught her one-handed, and pressed his plate and cup over into Vic's now-free hands. Taylor wrapped her arms around Mac's neck and broke off her sobs, sniffling.

Vic transferred the plate to his left hand along with the cup, holding them both with splayed fingers. Then he grabbed the burger that was still dangling from his mouth. Took a bite, chewed.

Felt an endorphin rush just from the taste of charred meat in his mouth.

"You can have the rest, actually," Mac said. "Okay, let's go get this girl a diaper, if you think she needs one so badly."

They walked slowly back towards the safe house. Taylor clung to Mac and patted his hair and babbled, as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Vic finished the hamburger, scooped up potato salad with his fingers, drank the beer. He _had_ been really fucking hungry. Which might account for _part_ of why it was pissing him off that Mac was so successfully doing exactly what he was _supposed_ to be doing—appearing to be Taylor's actual father.

They returned to the safe house via the back steps. At the top of the steps Mac started coughing again, hard enough that Vic moved in to take Taylor away from him. She came without complaint this time, looking a bit worried herself. "Daddy _sick_," she declared.

"I can't believe you've got her calling you 'Daddy' already," Vic muttered—but what he was _thinking_ was that climbing five stairs had made Mac cough, and walking up a gentle slope had too, and that was troubling.

Mac caught his breath, gave a weak grin, and stepped into the house. "Yeah, we worked on that with her pretty much all afternoon," he said. "It seemed like a priority. Don't worry, her real father's still Bàba."

Vic followed Mac in and shut the door. Meanwhile, Taylor's face fell. "Taytay wan Babaaaaaa," she wailed.

"Oops," Mac said, wincing. "Sorry."

"Yeah, they're always listening, and they always understand about fifty percent more than you think they do," Vic said. "You gotta learn to _spell_ things. For instance: let's go get Taylor a fresh d-i-a-p-e-r."

Mac frowned. "How the hell am I going to spell Bàba out loud? It's written with ideograms."

"Um, b-a-b-a?" Vic suggested, mildly.

Mac's eyes widened. "Oh."

* * *

Vic insisted that Mac be the one to actually change the diaper, kneeling on the floor in the blue bedroom. Vic hung back and gave advice. He sure as hell wasn't going to be the only person in this household who _could_ change a diaper, and Mac clearly needed some hands-on learning.

Mac ruined two diapers in the process—their sticky tabs hopelessly tangled—but eventually, after a solid ten minutes, he managed to get the third diaper firmly and neatly wrapped around Taylor's little butt. Taylor, meanwhile, actually stopped howling and thrashing about halfway through the process, and transitioned to squirms and squeals of laughing defiance.

To Mac's credit, at no point did he seem to get at all cranky or impatient with Taylor. And when he finally finished, he picked her up and gave her a belly raspberry followed by a nose-nuzzle, resulting in peals of toddler laughter.

"Oh my God," Vic murmured. "You're a natural at this."

Mac shrugged. "She's a person. People like me. Let's go back to the party."

"Uh, where are her pyjamas?" Vic asked.

"Soaking in the bathtub." Mac gave a little shudder. "You don't want to know. It was a horror show."

"I've looked after a baby before," Vic reminded him. "I've seen poop ... _everywhere_."

Mac wrinkled his nose. "I don't need to hear about it."

"Look, I don't think we should go back to the party," Vic said. "We should put Taylor to bed."

"She's wide awake," Mac pointed out. "And she _likes_ the party. There's other kids there. And there's _nothing_ in here."

"Mac..." Deep breath. "It's a _biker_ party. We don't want to get mixed up in that."

"No?" Mac asked. "Sonny's our neighbour. We don't know how long we're going to have to live here for. And it's not like they're all that dangerous. They grow the pot out in the woods and they sell it in Sudbury. No international stuff, no hard drugs."

"And you know this how?" Vic asked. "They just spilled all their deep dark secrets in casual conversation over beer? What did _you_ tell them about yourself to inspire those kinds of confidences?"

Mac rolled his eyes. "I'm an _intelligence agent_. I know how to find stuff out. And they weren't even all that secretive about it. Things are pretty casual out here."

"Yeah, casual organized crime. Great. Wonderful environment for a baby." Vic realized he was almost-sort-of shouting when Taylor whimpered and started to cry again.

"Look, have you ever _heard_ of Sonny and his crew? No. Neither have I. They're not on the Agency's radar. If they were big-time, if they were killing people, they'd be on the radar. I guarantee you, we've murdered more people _today_ than the rest of the party guests have, collectively, in their entire careers."

"It wasn't _murder_, it was a _mission_—" Vic insisted through clenched teeth.

But he was saying it to an empty room—Mac had already carried Taylor away.

* * *

They stayed at the party until well after dark.

Mac and Li Ann were both content to let Taylor run around with the small pack of children, under the watchful eye of twelve-year-old Hayley. Vic objected, on the basis of the river, the highway, the woods, and the bikes. After a brief argument about overprotectiveness and the lack of poisonous snakes in Ontario, Vic finally clued in that both Li Ann and Mac had, themselves, passed significant swathes of their childhoods wandering around outdoors in rural South-East Asia, in packs of children without adult supervision.

Which did at least give their lackadaisical child-supervision some _context_.

So Vic stopped trying to convince them to worry more (that would have to be a long-term project), and he just took it all on himself; he positioned himself where he could see the kids, and paid only distracted attention to the conversations that flowed around him.

Li Ann and Mac apparently had a wonderful time, sipping beer and chatting with bikers. Li Ann stayed on the lawn chair with her leg propped up for the whole evening; Mac checked in on her occasionally to see if she needed anything, and Vic saw at least one denim-clad biker bring her a fresh beer when Mac wasn't around.

They took to the biker party like ducks to water, in other words. And Vic couldn't help remembering—couldn't _stop_ remembering—that the two of them had spent a decade in a Triad gang.

Which made Mac's moral outrage over Vic doing his fucking _job_ a little ironic. (The guard's pleading eyes. _Stop thinking about it!_)

Eventually, inevitably, Taylor crashed. In the middle of a game of tag, she just sat down flat on the ground and started to howl. Hayley looked around for an adult to relieve her of the screaming child, and Vic swooped in.

"Are you the dad?" Haley asked, looking a bit confused, maybe questioning her memory of the 'Dadeeeee!' scene from earlier.

"Nah, but I'll bring her to him," Vic said.

The sun was dipping below the tops of the trees by that point. Shadows were getting long and the clouds were showing orange streaks. The crowd wasn't thinning and the music was as loud as ever, but the barbecues had gone cold. A few small bonfires had been started, in firepits scattered around the lawn, and the lawn chairs were migrating into circles around them.

Vic carried the rigid, howling child through the party until he spotted Mac, standing in a cluster of men. As Vic approached, he saw—and smelled—that they were passing a joint around. Vic hesitated outside of the circle long enough to notice Mac waving the joint away when it was offered to him. "Hey, Mac," he said. "Can you take Taylor?"

"Sure," Mac said, holding out his hands. "C'mere, Taytay."

Upon being transferred, Taylor transitioned from howls to quieter sobs. She buried her face on Mac's shoulder. He started swaying rhythmically, looking almost like he didn't realize he was doing it—he'd already gone back to the conversation he'd been having, something about Jackie Chan versus Bruce Lee.

The man standing next to Vic offered him a joint.

"Ah, no thanks," Vic said.

"Are you sure?" the guy said. He had a grey handlebar moustache, and wore a checked kerchief wrapped around his head. He gave Vic a yellow-toothed grin. "It keeps the mosquitoes away!"

Mac, swaying and holding Taylor, started to cough.

"Maybe let's get you both away from the smoke," Vic suggested, tightly.

Mac got control of himself, and nodded. "Maybe we can go sit with Li Ann?"

* * *

Li Ann, meanwhile, had moved—or been transferred. She still had her chair and stool, but she was sitting around one of the bonfires. All of the other chairs around the fire were also occupied, but when Li Ann waved to Mac and said "Hi, honey!" the man in the white plastic recliner next to her stood up and offered Mac his seat.

"Thanks, Fred," Mac said, easing himself down with Taylor on his lap.

"The seat goes to the guy with the baby," said the man—Fred—with an easy grin. He was the skinny tattooed guy Mac had been chatting with down by the river, earlier. "I'm gonna get more beer. Anybody want a refill?"

Fred wandered off. Vic, chair-less, settled for crouching between Li Ann and Mac. "How are you doing?" he asked Li Ann, quietly.

"Tired," she said. "And my chest hurts. But it's a nice party. I'm glad Sonny invited us."

Vic realized that right now was not the time to get into round two of trying to convince the Tang siblings that hanging out with a biker gang was not a wholesome family activity. Instead, he mentioned, "Invited? You didn't crash, then?"

Li Ann smiled a little. "Well, we semi-crashed. Mac wandered over and introduced himself, and got us an invitation."

"Of course he did," Vic muttered.

"And the barbecue smelled _so good_..." Li Ann murmured, reflectively.

Vic rolled his eyes. "Of course it did." He glanced over at Mac.

Mac's head was tilted back, and his eyes were closed. Taylor was curled up against his chest, thumb in her mouth and eyes drooping.

"Huh," Li Ann said in a tone of mild surprise. "That's adorable."

"Sure," Vic said. It _was_, and Vic was pretty sure that if he weren't pissed off at Mac right now for very complicated reasons (the kick of the gun, _don't think about it_) his heart would be melting. "So I guess we should get going home?"

But Li Ann shook her head. "Nah, let them be. I think Mac would still rather be with people, for now. He's ... pretty upset about what happened this morning."

"_He's_ upset?" Vic choked out. Except yes, obviously, Vic knew that Mac was upset. Mac had been reminding him all day, at every opportunity.

"_I_ know you had to do it," Li Ann said. "Somebody had to. I would have, if my knee hadn't gone out on me."

Vic glanced warily at Buffy and Sarah, who were chatting with each other on Li Ann's other side. They weren't paying attention to Li Ann and Vic right now, but they were easily in earshot. "Did you talk about it with him?" he asked.

"A little, this afternoon while you were sleeping. And I heard you two talking this morning, outside the car—I didn't fall asleep right away. I heard what he said about running."

Vic hunched his shoulders. "Do you think he meant it?"

Li Ann gave Mac and Taylor a long, thoughtful look before answering, and she coughed a little. "He definitely meant it at the time," she said finally. "But right now we have this other thing to do. We are where we are. It may be a weird situation, but at least it gives us some breathing room and some time to process what happened. I think he'll come around."

"Yeah," Vic said, without much conviction. "Probably. Sure."

* * *

They finally left the party around eleven, when Taylor woke up and started crying.

Somehow, the sleeping arrangements ended up split: Vic and Taylor in the blue bedroom with the foam pads, and Li Ann and Mac in the green bedroom with the two sleeping bags opened up and spread out on top of each other.

There was logic to it. Li Ann and Mac were exhausted, and coughing. Taylor was howling for her mother and father. Vic's five hour afternoon nap had restored his energy enough that he could handle a largely sleepless night if he had to.

Still. He was uneasy, being separated from Mac. It felt significant. They hadn't had a night apart in six months, not counting the occasional all-nighter pulled for work. Certainly if they were both sleeping, it was together. Maybe with Li Ann snuggled up to Mac's other side, depending on the night, but for sure Mac was falling asleep with his head tucked under Vic's chin, and Vic's arms wrapped around him; he _always_ went to sleep like that.

Not tonight, though.

Vic's mind skittered away from a serious examination of _why_ Mac might be avoiding him. (The guard's pleading eyes. The kick of the gun. It was _Mac_'s job, and Vic had had to do it.) It made sense to be separate. Somebody had to look after Taylor.

In the end Taylor howled for just over an hour, and then finally keeled over, sniffling, into a profound sleep on the bare floor in the back corner of the bedroom. Vic gave her five minutes by his watch and then carefully picked up her limp form and transferred her to one of the foam pads. Then he turned off the lights, felt his way carefully to the other pad, and lay down on his side feeling weary, sore and alone. He felt Mac's absence like a ghost curled up against his chest.

He wasn't sure if he'd be able to sleep. But he did.

* * *

The perimeter guard was tied up on the ground. His torso glowed orange in the infra-red; his face was bright yellow, hot, alive. He was saying something, but Vic couldn't make it out.

"I can't understand you!" Vic cried out in frustration. His gun was in his hand. He tried to point it at the sky, away from the guard, but it was stuck, it wouldn't move. He tried harder; he tugged at the gun, yanked at it. Grabbed it by the trigger. No, wait, _shit_, he didn't mean to pull the trigger. But the gun fired.

A little black dot opened up on the guard's forehead and spread, spread, until his whole face was black and dead.

Vic realized that he was wearing infra-red goggles. He took them off, and the colours all switched around. The guard's face was white and his eyes were staring.

Vic had to burn the body.

He stumbled across the grass, carrying the dead guard. He kept dropping him, because he was slippery with blood. Vic's hands were covered with blood.

Finally he got the guard to the cabin. The cabin's doorway looked just like the access hatch in the Cherry Street incinerator, where the Cleaners liked to dispose of their kills. Vic fumbled with the body, dropped it one more time, picked it up and tossed it in.

As he did so, he caught a glimpse of the face.

It was Mac. Mac's dead, staring eyes. Mac's body rolling into the fire, flames licking his hair and clothes.

"Mac!" Vic screamed. "No!" ...

And suddenly it was dark. No fire, no heat, no smoke.

Vic was sitting up, heart pounding, tasting bile. He wasn't sure if he'd really screamed. Maybe not. He didn't feel a scream in his throat. But he was swallowing hard, and for a moment or two he _really_ wasn't sure if he was going to puke.

He did not vomit. His arms and legs were shaky. He tucked his knees up, hugged them. Rocked. Breathed.

_Fuck_, that dream. Nightmare.

Vic's penlight was still in a pocket of his cargo pants, which he was still wearing. He pulled it out, pointed it at the floor, turned it on.

Confirmed Taylor's sleeping form on the other pad. She hadn't stirred; he probably hadn't screamed out loud, then.

Usually Mac was the one with nightmares. They didn't come as often anymore as they used to, but they weren't gone. They came more often when Mac was stressed. They came _less_ often after a good run of comfortable evenings snuggling on the couch with Li Ann, taking turns picking which movie to watch. The therapy and the meds helped. Vic thought—believed—that _he_ helped. Mac had told him, flat out, many times, that he felt safe in Vic's arms, safe in a way that he'd never felt before in his life.

The image of Mac in the dream rose up in Vic's mind again—Mac's body burning in the Cherry Street incinerator, transposed onto the Lake Simcoe cabin.

Oh God.

Vic had to check on Mac. He knew it didn't make sense, but he _had_ to, right now at this moment, make sure that Mac was okay.

He stood up, padded out of the room as lightly as possible. Some of the floorboards creaked.

He crossed the hall, opened the other bedroom door. Shone the flashlight on Mac and Li Ann, avoiding their faces.

They were asleep, curled up towards each other. Only their hands were touching; their fingers were twined together, between their chests.

Vic relaxed, relieved of whatever irrational fear he'd had that the dream had signalled real, present peril. And then he tensed again, thinking about the fact that Mac and Li Ann hadn't woken up when Vic had opened the door; if he'd been a Chinese commando, they'd be dead now.

Okay, he couldn't descend into paranoid what-ifs. They were in deep cover. Nobody could possibly track them here, unless they got to the Director or Dobrinsky directly. And if _that_ happened—well. No point worrying about it.

Vic closed the door, gently, and went back to bed.


	4. Chapter 4

A howling child was an effective alarm clock for the whole household. In other words: they all got up at six a.m..

Getting dressed was unnecessary, since they were all still wearing the only clothes they had. Breakfast was a jar of pear sauce for Taylor, beef jerky and nuts for everyone else. Most of the pear sauce ended up on Taylor's torso or in her hair, since she wasn't in a cooperative mood. Some of it ended up on Vic's tank top, which he then rinsed in the bathroom sink and put right back on. Taylor's duck pyjamas were floating in the tub, and were clearly not going to be fit to wear until they'd met with some soap. Vic put laundry detergent on his extremely long mental shopping list, and resigned himself to driving into Sudbury with a nearly-naked toddler.

Vic assigned Mac the job of changing Taylor's diaper before they headed out. Mac accepted it with grace, picking Taylor up and baby-talking to her as he carried her off to the blue bedroom.

Should they start calling it Taylor's room?

Li Ann, meanwhile, was sitting on the kitchen floor, re-wrapping her knee.

"How are you doing?" Vic asked, as soon as Mac was out of earshot.

"Ugh," she said. "My knee's stiffened up. I feel like someone's kneeling on my chest. I couldn't stop coughing for ten minutes when I woke up this morning—and neither could Mac. Also, I feel like I haven't showered for a month, I've got ash in my _ears_, my clothes feel like they could stand up without me, I stink of sweat and smoke, and my teeth feel fuzzy." She bared her teeth, and then ran her tongue along them. "Put toothpaste on the list."

"Yeah, we need _paper_ before we can make a list," Vic pointed out. "So ... you're doing great, huh?"

She gave him a rueful grin. "How about you?"

"Not that bad," he said. "Kind of stiff, from sleeping on that thin styrofoam pad. I hear you about the fuzzy teeth and the stink. And I'm covered in mosquito bites from last night."

"Oh yeah, that too," Li Ann agreed, making a face and scratching her shoulder. "How did Taylor sleep?"

"She slept straight through once she finally went down," Vic said. "Luckily. I doubt I would've been able to get her back to sleep if she'd woken up in the night wanting her mom and dad." Her piteous wails of _Mama_, _Baba_ had tugged at Vic's heart all through breakfast. The poor kid. "How'd _you_ sleep?" he asked.

"_Ugh_," Li Ann said again, emphatically. "It's a good thing you and Taylor were in the other room. Mac and I kept waking each other up with the coughing. _And_ Mac woke us up twice with night terrors."

"Shit," Vic said, and did not mention his own nightmare. "Twice? He hasn't had a night that bad in a long time."

Li Ann shrugged. "Well. Consider what happened yesterday."

Vic preferred not to consider that, actually. "Did he say what he was dreaming about?"

"His mom, both times."

"And ... was he okay?" _Without me there to hold him?_

"Well, he did a couple of the exercises that Reshmi gave him." Li Ann glanced back towards the bedrooms. "I had to remind him. But he did okay after that."

"And did you talk any more about ... yesterday?" Vic didn't want to ask. But he had to ask.

Li Ann shook her head. "Mostly we just coughed and tried to sleep."

At that point, Mac and Taylor came back. "Diaper done!" Mac announced cheerfully. Taylor was clinging to his neck, looking moderately distraught but not actually crying. "I got it on the second try this time."

Vic made himself grin, but he knew it didn't reach his eyes. "Hey, great! You're improving!"

Li Ann held out her hands. "Somebody help me up? Let's go shopping!"

* * *

They started with clothes—a dozen outfits for each of them in a variety of styles. Then they each took a turn changing in the mall's public restrooms. For Taylor, they just popped a fresh yellow dress right over her head—nobody looked askance at a young family dressing their toddler in the food court.

"I wish I could _shower_," Li Ann murmured.

"Tonight," Vic promised. "So we're going to need soap, towels..."

They moved slowly. Taylor wanted to either hold Mac's hand or have him carry her, so Vic helped Li Ann limp along. They couldn't carry a lot of bags, so Vic and Mac took turns running out to the car to drop stuff off.

Taylor consistently addressed Li Ann and Mac as Mommy and Daddy; they really had succeeded, yesterday, in convincing her that those were their names. They'd started addressing each _other_ as Mommy and Daddy, too, in front of Taylor, which Vic supposed had been an essential part of that campaign.

It was strange to walk through the mall, interact with sales clerks, and know that absolutely nobody was doubting that Li Ann, Mac and Taylor were a real family.

And Vic? What was he? 'Our friend who lives with us.' Taylor hadn't even learned his name yet.

On with the shopping. Kitchen stuff: plates and bowls, cutlery, pots, and so on. Even limiting themselves to the basics, Vic was worried that they'd fill up the car before they were halfway through the day.

"We can make another trip tomorrow if we have to," Li Ann pointed out. "Let's just get what we really need."

They moved on to furniture. This, obviously, they wouldn't be driving back to Key River themselves. They bought everything from Sears, which promised delivery by truck on Monday.

"Just two more nights sleeping on the floor!" Mac said, almost believably cheerfully.

In fact they didn't get beds—just mattresses. When they looked at the price of furniture, their total budget of fifteen thousand dollars for the foreseeable future (of which they'd already spent nearly a thousand on clothes alone) looked worryingly slim. So they bought two queen-sized mattresses, a dining room table with four chairs, a couch, and that was it. Some coat hangers for the closets. Linen for the beds.

They debated whether curtains were a frill (they were bizarrely expensive, for being pretty much just rectangles of fabric). Decided they were a necessity—privacy was important, as was hindering the view for potential snipers.

Mac wanted a TV and VCR. Vic argued against them (a wary eye on their budget), but Mac persisted, and actually he had a really good point about how they were going to be stuck in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do for God (or the Director) only knew how long. So they bought a smallish TV and a VCR, a few kids' movies, and _Rumble in the Bronx_ from the clearance bin. Li Ann insisted that they go to a bookstore, too; they each ended up picking up a couple of novels, and they bought some brightly-coloured picture books for Taylor.

At the end of the day, exhausted, they stopped for pizza.

Taylor had had lots of dramatic ups and downs over the course of the day, but she was on an _up_ as they sat down at the pizza place. The waitress—a bouncy dark-haired twenty-something with a Franco-Ontarian accent—brought crayons and paper, and Taylor happily started scribbling. Mac picked up a crayon and joined right in, to Taylor's laughing delight.

"She's so cute!" the waitress chirped at Mac. "And she looks _just like_ you!"

They all managed to hold in their giggles until the waitress was out of earshot. And then they all just _collapsed_, hooting with laughter until they had tears in their eyes. Li Ann and Mac both started coughing, but they didn't stop laughing.

"Oh my God," Li Ann finally managed to wheeze. "That shouldn't be so funny."

"We've all been under a lot of stress," Vic pointed out.

"It must be the chin dimple," Mac said, rubbing his own cleft chin. "She sure does have my chin dimple."

Li Ann wobbled in her chair, giggling and coughing some more. "Well, at least she doesn't have your _eyebrows_," she said, poking Mac's face affectionately.

"What's wrong with my eyebrows?" Mac asked, looking wounded.

"Nothing at all," Li Ann said. "If you find fuzzy caterpillars attractive."

Vic, meanwhile, sat back and stared at Taylor. "Huh," he said. "You guys—this probably isn't important to the case or anything, but I just realized something. Geneviève's been sleeping around."

Li Ann blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Huang can't be Taylor's real father." Vic tapped his own smooth chin. "He doesn't have a chin dimple, and neither does Geneviève."

"I really don't remember them that clearly," Li Ann said. "Are you sure?"

"I'm pretty sure. I have a good memory for facial features—it's a cop thing."

Mac shrugged. "Anyway, kids don't always look like their parents. Sometimes they look like their grandparents, or whatever."

"No, I learned about this in high school biology," Vic said. "The cleft chin was a specific example we studied in class. It's a dominant trait. So if either Huang or Geneviève had the gene to pass on, they'd also express it—they'd have a chin dimple. So Taylor can't have got it from either one of them. Ergo—Geneviève's been doing the nasty with somebody else."

Mac held up his hands in mock surrender. "Don't look at me. I was in prison in Hong Kong when this kid was born."

Vic snorted. "Yeah. Also, if you were her father, she'd be white."

"Ha! True," Mac conceded, with a rueful grin.

"Hm," Li Ann said, reaching for her water glass—and missing. Her hand knocked into it sideways, and it went tumbling into her lap. "Oh, _shit_!" She started coughing.

Mac's eyes popped in exaggerated shock. "_Mommy!_ We don't use that language in front of Taytay!"

She caught her breath and bared her teeth at him in a very unamused grin. "Vic," she said, "Would you help me to the washroom? I need to clean up."

"Sure," he said, getting up.

So they left Mac playing with Taylor, and Vic helped Li Ann limp over to the ladies' room. She was quiet and pale.

"You're not doing too well, are you?" Vic asked her in an undertone.

She shook her head. "Uh, no. Breathing hurts more now than it did this morning. And now ... _fuck_. My pants are soaking wet."

"Well, I have one piece of good news for you," Vic said. "You have five more pairs of pants in the car. How about you go in there—" he nodded at the ladies' room door "—and pat yourself down with some paper towels, and I'll go get you some fresh pants. Or would you rather shorts? Or a skirt? You have so many choices."

"Actually, a skirt might be better," she said, with a weak smile. "Easier to get on over the knee. Thanks, Vic."

* * *

In the car on the way back to Key River, Li Ann sat on the front passenger side and tried to sleep. Mac read Taylor _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ thirteen times in a row. Vic drove, and worried.

Li Ann really needed a doctor. So did Mac. But their injuries could link them to the fire, and the dead commandos, and if Chinese intelligence was throwing resources into looking for them ... _fuck_. They just couldn't risk it.

Back at the safe house, Li Ann called dibs on the first shower. After her, Mac and then Vic took their turns, and then Vic gave Taylor a bath. She cried the whole time, but at least she was clean at the end of it.

Once Taylor was dry and in fresh pyjamas, Vic brought her out to the living room. Mac and Li Ann were sitting on the floor, reading. (The TV would be coming along with the furniture on Monday.) "Hey, so, uh, sleeping arrangements," Vic said. "Same as last night?" He wasn't enthusiastic about turning it into an ongoing pattern, but with Li Ann and Mac still coughing so much, it didn't make sense to put them in the same room as Taylor.

"Well," Li Ann said, looking up, "How about I put Taylor to bed tonight? You two should have some alone time. I think you need it."

"Are you sure?" Vic asked.

"Yes, seriously. Give her to me." Li Ann held out her arms, then looked down at her outstretched, wrapped-up knee. "Er, scratch that. Help me into her bedroom, and _then_ give her to me."

"Okay," Vic said, not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Thanks!"

"Thanks," Mac said too, considerably less enthusiastically.

* * *

In the green bedroom (the adult bedroom?), Vic started taking his clothes off. Mac just sat on the open sleeping bags, arms around his knees.

"Aren't you going to get undressed?" Vic asked, when he was down to his boxers.

"Yeah, sure," Mac said, and started slowly pulling off his t-shirt.

"Shit," Vic said, and sat down next to him. "We need to talk." He splayed a hand across the small of Mac's back, since Mac's t-shirt was currently over his head.

Mac finished pulling the t-shirt off and moved away from Vic. "No," he said. "I'm tired. Let's just go to sleep."

Mac was shutting him out. Mac was shutting him out, and Vic was pissed off about it (was _hurt_, fuck) because Vic had only been doing his fucking _job_, they'd _all_ had a job to do (and Vic wouldn't have had to kill that guard if Mac had done it like he was supposed to ... shit, that wasn't it, that wasn't the thing he was mad about, was it? because that _definitely_ wasn't fair and Vic didn't want to be mad at Mac for reasons that weren't fair).

So he decided to manipulate Mac.

"I understand," he said. Gently. "You must be feeling really crappy."

"Uh," Mac hesitated. "I'm fine. I just want to sleep."

Bingo.

Mac lied like breathing, when he wanted to. It was a survival skill from his childhood, Vic knew that. It made him a great agent. He could do undercover _so_ much better than Vic could; the Director loved him for it, used him for it. (_She_ lied habitually, recreationally and religiously.)

If Mac didn't want to have a conversation, he'd tell any convenient lie to get out of it. _I'm tired_ was an easy one. Even people who _hadn't_ been raised by international drug traffickers, con men and gangsters reached for that one in times of awkwardness.

But also, Mac had a borderline-pathological need to downplay his pain when he was injured or sick—like an animal afraid of being culled from the herd. _That_ had its roots, Vic knew, in the terrifying months Mac had spent alone on the streets of Hong Kong after his father had abandoned him. Michael had reinforced the tendency with a decade of abuse, teaching Mac very explicitly that the only way to avoid _more_ pain was to pretend that he didn't have _any_.

Vic, usually, tried to cut through all that. Insisted on honesty, and generally got it (after a bit of cajoling, and some very pointed questions).

But. Vic _knew_ right now that Mac was in physical pain. And if he pushed on that _just_ the right amount, Vic knew that he could flip Mac's _I'm tired_ into a need to prove how fine he was. "Right, you're probably about ready to fall over," Vic said. "Li Ann said you were up most of last night, coughing."

"No, I'm doing better now," Mac said. And stood up to unfasten his jeans.

Vic rejoiced and despaired, simultaneously, without letting any of it into his eyes. _It was working._ And it was terrible that it was working, because it proved the distance between them. If Mac trusted Vic, if he felt safe enough, he wouldn't lie to say that he felt better.

"But you're not feeling good enough for sex," Vic said, and cringed inside because he wasn't even sure who he _was_ right now, deliberately using his boyfriend's psychological damage to manipulate him into sex. (But they _had_ to have sex, Vic needed to know that Mac could forgive him for what he had done. The kick of the gun in his hand. The guard's dead eyes.)

Mac's eyes narrowed as his jeans puddled around his ankles, and Vic thought for a moment that Mac was on to him. But he said, "We can't have sex. We didn't buy condoms today. Or lube."

"We did buy olive oil," Vic pointed out. "And we don't need condoms. Not really."

Mac's eyebrow flicked up at that one. "I thought _I_ was the reckless one."

"It's not reckless," Vic said. "We've been together for six months. I haven't had sex with anyone else since our last blood tests—have you?"

"No, of course not," Mac said. Still looking wary.

"So, it's safe," Vic insisted. This wasn't the direction he'd been planning to take this conversation in, but here they were. His heart was racing, for some reason. "Don't you trust me?" Oh, that was why.

Mac sat down on the opposite corner of the open sleeping bags. "I thought I did," he said, cautiously.

That was not the answer that Vic had been hoping for. "I trust _you_," he said. And left it unspoken that Mac was the one who lied all the time. (Who'd said 'I've got this,' and then left the guard alive.) "Come on. Let's fuck. It'll make us both feel a whole lot better."

"I'm not sure I want to, tonight," Mac said. He'd tucked up his knees again, hugged his arms around them. He hadn't taken off his underwear.

"You _always_ want sex," Vic contradicted him. "You wanted sex when your _ribs_ were broken. Why wouldn't you want sex tonight? Tell me."

Mac opened his mouth as though he _was_ going to tell him, but then he closed it again. Rubbed his arms over his legs. "Never mind," he said. "Sure. You win. Let's fuck. You go get the olive oil."

Vic felt uneasy. He'd won—did that mean that Mac had lost?

He padded out to the sparsely stocked kitchen and grabbed the unopened bottle of olive oil. He picked up a fresh box of tissues, too, thinking ahead to cleanup.

Passing by the door of the other bedroom, he heard Taylor wailing inside, "Mamaaaaa!" followed by a long, sobbing howl. So ... pretty much just like last night, then. Vic hoped that Li Ann's nerves weren't shredded yet.

When he got back to the green bedroom, he saw that Mac had shoved the sleeping bags over to the side of the room, and had spread out one of their new bath towels on the floor.

"The sleeping bags are borrowed," Mac pointed out by way of explanation. "Let's be good neighbours."

"Right," Vic said, giving the towel on the hardwood floor a bit of careful consideration. He thought about his knees. "Actually, why don't you go stand against the wall."

"Sure," Mac shrugged. He was already naked; his briefs were crumpled on the floor next to his jeans and t-shirt. He slouched quietly over to the blank north wall, planted his hands against it.

This was ... wrong. Vic felt tense, full of misgivings. Mac was saying yes, sure, he'd stripped off his clothes and he was standing against the wall, legs slightly spread, waiting for Vic—but where was the enthusiasm? Where was the energy, the _joy_ that Mac always brought to sex?

Okay, Mac was mad at him. (He had no _right_. Vic had had no _choice_.) But sex would make it better. Vic would make it better with sex.

Bringing the oil and the tissue box with him, Vic walked over to Mac. He put the supplies down by their feet and then stepped in close, resting his hands on Mac's hips and kissing his shoulder.

"I'm not in the mood for foreplay," Mac muttered. "Just get on with it."

"Shut up," Vic said. "I'm not even hard yet."

Mac was pissed off, and he was taking it out on Vic. Okay. But Vic _knew_ he could make this work. Never, ever, in their whole time together, had Mac not been up for sex. Vic just had to get him into the right head-space, and then they'd be able to reconnect.

He kissed Mac's neck, and Mac ducked his head down below the level of his rigid shoulders. Undissuaded, Vic kissed Mac's shoulders again, and then stepped back half a pace so he could run his thumbs, mirror-motion, inside the curves of Mac's shoulder blades and down along his ribs. "That's where your wings would be," Vic mentioned, bemused by a stray thought, "if you were actually an angel."

"Fuck off," Mac bit out—without moving. "I'm a criminal, I've always been a criminal, I _get_ it."

Oops, Vic hadn't meant for Mac to take the angel comment as an accusation. (Hadn't he? Mac thought he was better than Vic, too good to do the job the Director had given them to do.) "Fallen angel, maybe," Vic said, reaching for the whimsical. "Never mind, forget it." He lightly traced the two big, dark bullseye bruises on Mac's back, one over his left kidney, the other at the bottom of his right shoulder. Another reason not to go to the doctor any time soon—they were distinctively the marks left by a bullet's kinetic energy bleeding off into Kevlar. "I don't want to fight with you. Could we not be fighting? That was a close call, in the cabin yesterday."

"We're not fighting," Mac said. "We're having sex."

To describe what they were doing right now as 'having sex' would really be reaching, but Vic realized that was his fault as much as Mac's. Too much talking, not enough touching.

So he concentrated on touching. Running his hands up and down Mac's body, kissing his shoulder blades, reaching around to squeeze his nipples. And Mac's body responded—when Vic trailed his hand down Mac's flat belly to his groin, he found Mac's cock standing at rigid attention. Which was reassuring, since Vic himself was still only half-hard, his mood dampened by Mac's tense passivity. So then, with one hand around Mac's cock just enjoying the feel, Vic stroked himself a few times and got himself fully erect. "That's more like it," he murmured.

He let go of both of them and ducked down to pick up the olive oil. Cracked the seal, dribbled a little bit out onto his hand. Stroked his cock, getting it nice and slippery. "Are you ready?" he asked Mac.

Mac didn't say anything, but he edged his heels further apart and moved his hands down the wall, leaning over to make his ass more accessible. So Vic had to assume that was a _yes_.

Vic used his fingers to spread Mac's cheeks, and then he pushed his cock inside. And—oh _God_ that felt amazing. Vic gasped.

"You've never ridden bareback before, have you?" Mac murmured. "Go ahead, feel it."

Vic moved his hips through one slow, experimental thrust. The sensation was so intense he shuddered.

"Wait, wait," Mac said. "Pass me some tissues."

"Huh?"

"_Tissues_," Mac repeated. "Or I'll come all over the wall."

Vic smirked, thrust again. "You think you can hit the wall from there?"

"Or the floor, whatever," Mac said, sounding annoyed rather than amused. "Come on, we're sharing this room with Li Ann, let's not leave puddles of spunk all over the place."

Well, he had a point about that. Reluctantly, Vic withdrew so that he could reach the tissue box. He quickly snatched a few out, and handed them to Mac in a wad. "Here."

Mac shifted the one hand that he'd kept braced on the wall, finding his balance. "Okay," he said.

And then Vic was back inside Mac, and moving, and it was fantastic. And Mac seemed to be into it too, finally—he was making those little whimpering noises on each thrust, his very specific I-am-about-to-come-from-you-pounding-me-in-the-ass sound that he only made on the rare occasions when he'd totally yielded control to Vic.

Then Mac shuddered and tensed, and made a sound best described as a high-pitched whine.

"Did you come?" Vic asked, a little unsure, because that wasn't one of Mac's usual noises.

Mac nodded, and started to cough.

Vic held still, waiting it out. It was a weird sensation; every time Mac coughed, his muscles contracted around Vic's cock.

The coughing fit went on long enough that Vic was starting to think that he should probably pull out and give up on the sex, but finally Mac did catch his breath.

"Are you okay?" Vic asked. "We don't have to keep going."

"No, it's fine. I'm fine," Mac said. "You should finish."

That wasn't exactly the sexiest thing Mac had ever said to him, but Vic was so physically keyed up (oh _God_, the way Mac had tightened around Vic's cock on every cough) he was willing to take it.

Vic put his hands on Mac's hips again, and let himself block out everything but the sensation of his dick inside Mac's tight ass. He closed his eyes and thrust, savouring the unprecedented intensity of bare skin.

It didn't take long at all for Vic to come, with a shouting gasp. "Jesus," he breathed, as soon as he could form a word. "Mac. That was ... amazing." He pulled out—his hand starting automatically forward to grasp the base of a condom for the withdrawal, but of course that wasn't necessary.

"Mm," Mac said, sort of noncommittally. "I'm going to go have another shower now. You should go to bed."

"I could come with you and wash your back," Vic offered, hopefully.

"Nah." Mac grabbed the unused towel from the floor, wrapped it around his waist, and started walking away. "I'd rather do it myself."

The sex hadn't worked. Mac was still mad at him.

(Well, fuck him. Vic had killed that guard _for_ him.)

* * *

Vic was still awake when Mac got back from his shower, but he pretended not to be. He hoped that Mac would snuggle in against him in his usual way if he thought that Vic was already asleep. But no—Mac lay as far away from Vic as he could get without going past the edge of the open sleeping bag they were both lying on. Slitting his eyes open, Vic saw that Mac had turned his back to him.

Briefly, Vic considered easing forward and spooning Mac. Surely Mac wouldn't _actively_ reject his embrace? But in the end, Vic didn't dare. He couldn't bear the thought of Mac pushing him away—better not to even try.

The ongoing faint sound of Taylor's howls from the other room provided an appropriately mournful atmosphere as Vic drifted off to sleep, uncomfortable and miserable and alone, two feet away from the love of his life.

* * *

Vic woke up in darkness, trailing dissipating shreds of nightmare (the Cherry Street incinerator, flames licking across Mac's body), to discover Mac tucked up in his arms, moaning and shaking.

"Oh, Jeez," Vic murmured, blinking away his sleep-confusion (his nightmare). "Mac, it's okay." He tightened his arms around Mac. "You're okay, you're safe. Are you awake?" No response, no change in the quavering, guttural moans. Probably not quite awake, then.

At home, at this point, Vic would clap the lights on to help Mac wake up and escape the night terror. Here, he would have to stand up and walk over to the light switch by the door. Which would mean letting go of Mac, leaving him alone. Vic didn't want to do that, not now. He could wake him up in the dark. He shook Mac's shoulder, gently, preparing himself to duck out of the way if Mac tried to hit him (which happened, sometimes). "Wake up Mac, you're having a bad dream."

Mac gasped. There was just enough light in the room (moonlight through the window, they hadn't installed the curtains yet) that Vic could see Mac's eyes pop open.

"It was a dream," Vic said again, quickly. "You're okay, you're safe."

Mac stared at him for a moment, frozen. Then he pushed himself out of Vic's arms. "Don't fucking _touch_ me," he grated out. He half-rolled, half-scrambled away to the edge of the sleeping bag, climbed to his feet, and stumbled towards the bedroom door—succumbing, meanwhile, to a harsh coughing fit. He left the room, still coughing, leaving the door open behind him.

"What the _hell_?" Vic asked the empty room.

He quickly pulled on his previously-discarded boxers, and followed Mac to the kitchen. (They usually slept naked when Li Ann wasn't with them, but Mac had put on underwear when he'd come back from his shower earlier. Which was yet another tiny dagger in Vic's heart, another little rejection of intimacy.)

Mac had the kitchen light on, and he was struggling with the unopened box containing the new electric kettle. He looked up at Vic's approach, and scowled. "I told you to _leave me alone_."

"No, you said not to touch you," Vic corrected him, almost managing not to snap. "Which was sort of confusing, since you're the one who crawled into _my_ arms while we were sleeping."

Mac glared at him. "I was _asleep_." He stared down at the recalcitrant box, which he still hadn't managed to open. "Why the _fuck_ do they use all this fucking _tape_?"

"Give it to me," Vic said, holding out his hands. Mac actually bared his teeth a little, he was that pissed off—but then he handed the box to Vic and hunched over the counter, coughing again.

Vic pulled out their new chef's knife and slitted the thick tape that was holding the box shut. "You were having a bad dream," he mentioned. "Do you want to talk about it?" He pulled out the kettle, freed it from its styrofoam packing blocks.

"Fuck, no," Mac said.

"Okay, fine." Vic brought the kettle to the sink and started to fill it. "Just don't take it out on me."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Mac asked. "I'm not doing anything to you. I just want to make some tea."

Vic plugged the kettle in. Squeezed his hands into fists, forced them loose again. "You're mad at me," he said. "And frankly, you're being an asshole about it, and I'm getting sick of it."

"How the hell am _I_ the one being an asshole?" Mac shot back at him.

Vic sputtered for a moment, because that question did not have a very clear answer. (_You keep bringing up that fucking guard._ But Vic didn't want to talk about the guard.) "You're freezing me out," he said finally.

"Are you serious?" Mac asked, his voice climbing in pitch and tone. "_How_ am I freezing you out? You wanted to have sex—so we _did_. I let you fuck me bareback, what the fuck more do you want from me?"

"I want you to stop acting like you can't stand to be near me!" Vic shouted. "It's not like you haven't killed just as many people as I have!" (Oops, there it was, he'd brought up the guard, _shit_.)

Mac glared at him. "I've never killed anybody who was _tied up_."

"Yeah, and you _still haven't_, because I did it _for_ you."

Mac drew back as though Vic had hit him—but he didn't say anything, because at that moment Li Ann emerged from the other bedroom, limp-hopping towards them with Taylor, sobbing, tucked football-style under her left arm.

"I heard you guys talking," she said. "Since you're awake, how about you take Taylor for a while?"

Mac, who was closer, went over to her, and Li Ann immediately thrust Taylor into his outstretched arms. "Maamaaaaa," Taylor wailed.

"When did she wake up again?" Vic asked.

Li Ann let out a hysterical, hollow-eyed laugh. "Again? She never went to sleep. She's been crying for her mother for _four solid hours_. You deal with her. I. Just. Can't." She turned on her heel, limp-hopped as fast as she could away from them, and went into the adult bedroom, slamming the door hard behind herself.

Mac, still holding Taylor at arm's length, gave the toddler a muted smile. "Having a rough night, Taytay? I guess we all are, huh."

Taylor just howled, her mouth an open crescent of despair.

Mac turned to Vic, raising his eyebrows helplessly. "What do we _do_?"

"Um, check her diaper."

"_How_?"

Vic rolled his eyes. "Smell her butt."

Mac wrinkled his nose. "Ew." But he did it. "Smells fine."

"Okay, is it wet? Squishy?"

Mac squeezed the outside of Taylor's diaper. "No, I don't think so," he said. Taylor wailed.

"Okay." Vic stared at the howling child, trying to remember strategies that worked. Alice, as a toddler, had had a fiery temper. Vic had looked after her overnight on occasion; he'd certainly had to soothe her to sleep when she was angry or distraught, though probably never anywhere near what Taylor must be feeling. "Do you think you could try walking with her? Just, like, back and forth across the living room. I'll warm up some milk."

The empty living room/dining room area stretched the whole width of the front of the house. Mac carried Taylor into it, passing around the edge of the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the larger space. As he did so, he shifted his hold on her so that she was resting against his bare chest, her head on his shoulder. Although she'd been holding herself rigid in Li Ann's grasp earlier, she wrapped her arms around Mac's neck and her legs around his chest—still sobbing.

"Aw, Taytay. You've sure had a rough couple of days," Mac soothed her, as he started pacing the length of the room. "All these strangers grabbing you and taking you places. You miss your Mama and Bàba. They miss you too, but they have important work to do and it's very dangerous, so they asked us to keep you safe. We'll keep you safe until they're ready to take you back."

Meanwhile, Vic poured milk into a sippy cup. Then he poured some of the hot water from the kettle into a bowl, and set the sippy cup in it. After a minute or so, he took the sippy cup out again and shook it. "Okay, I have some warm milk for her," he said. "Let's see if she'll take it."

Mac was still pacing back and forth, murmuring to Taylor. Her sobs had quieted to whimpers. Vic came up behind them and showed Taylor the sippy cup. "Want some milk, Taylor?"

She took it. Mac shifted his hold on her so that she could drink more easily. Silence descended, broken only by the sucking noise of Taylor draining the cup.

She let it drop when it was about three quarters empty, and her breath immediately hitched into a fresh sob.

"Okay, let's walk again," Mac said, tucking her back against his shoulder.

Vic scooped the sippy cup up off the floor. "Alice _never_ cried this much."

"Maybe she would've if she'd been kidnapped and held hostage by shadowy government agents," Mac said—but in a soft, sing-song, baby-soothing tone.

Vic decided not to ask whether Mac meant the Chinese commandos, or themselves.

Anyway, by the time Mac had walked slowly back and forth across the room another four times, Taylor's arms had gone limp around his neck.

"Her eyes are closed," Vic whispered. "Bring her to the bedroom."

They tiptoed back to the blue bedroom, and hovered over one of the foam pads. Vic reached out to help Mac lower Taylor gently, gently. Her eyes stayed closed as she descended, supported by their four hands working together. And Vic felt his heart ease a little at the fact that he and Mac _were_ working together, physically in sync, the way they were supposed to be. Mac had abandoned his prickly hostility as soon as Li Ann had handed Taylor to him.

Taylor was flat on the pad. They eased their hands away from her.

Her eyes squinched open, and she howled.

"God _damn_ it," Vic muttered.

Mac scooped her up again. Her howl immediately trailed off into a couple of whimpers, and then silence. She laid her head on Mac's bare shoulder and glared at Vic with glittering, tear-filled eyes.

"Okay," Mac said. "I guess I'll walk with her some more."

"I could take a turn," Vic offered.

Mac shook his head. "I didn't want to go back to sleep right away, anyway."

Right, the nightmare. Which Mac hadn't wanted to talk about.

And it was the second night in a row, and things hadn't been that bad for _months_, not since the therapy and the antidepressants....

"Oh _shit_," Vic said suddenly, with feeling. "You don't have your meds."

"Huh?" Mac was already in the doorway, heading back to the front of the house with Taylor.

Vic stood up and followed him. "The Zoloft. You don't have it. You've missed two days already. No wonder you're having nightmares."

Mac frowned, shook his head. "It'll take more than two days for it to flush out of my system. That's not the problem here. The drugs never _stopped_ the dreams."

"But they helped," Vic insisted.

"Well, it's been a really crappy couple of days," Mac pointed out. "I've got a lot on my mind." They'd reached the empty living/dining room. Mac resumed his back-and-forth path from earlier, and Vic leaned against the wall, watching him.

"We need to get you more drugs somehow. We don't know how long we're going to be stuck here."

Mac wrinkled his nose. "I think I'm going to have to do without them. Not like I can go to some shrink in Sudbury and spill my guts. We're fucking _deep_ undercover, remember?"

Vic had to concede the point, but he didn't have to like it.

"Anyway, Reshmi gave me all those exercises," Mac reminded him. "I think I'll be okay."

"Are you _doing_ them?" Vic asked.

"_Yes_," Mac answered, testily. "I do the visualization every night before I go to sleep, okay?"

"What about tonight?"

"Fuck _off_!" Mac snapped. "I wouldn't have had a nightmare _tonight_ if you hadn't—" He broke off, interrupted by Taylor starting to wail. "_Fuck!_ Now you're upsetting Taylor!"

"_I'm_ upsetting Taylor? You're the one shouting."

Mac glared at him. "I wouldn't be shouting if you weren't here! Go to bed!"

"Okay, I will!" Vic shouted back, except he didn't, because Mac had started coughing. So instead, Vic cautiously approached Mac, half-raising his hands in case he needed to grab Taylor. It didn't come to that—Mac didn't lose his grip on her. The coughing fit seemed pretty bad, though. It went on for a long time. Taylor stopped crying, wrinkled her nose, and watched Mac with a worried-curious expression. When he finally did stop coughing, she patted his head and said, "Daddy cough. Daddy sick."

Mac gave her a weak grin. He took a slightly wheezy breath and said, "Daddy's not sick, Taytay. Daddy's breathing got hurt from a fire."

Vic frowned. "You shouldn't tell her that. She could repeat it in front of somebody."

Mac hunched his shoulders, looking pained. "Right. Shit. Okay, yes, Taytay. Daddy's sick. But he's getting better."

"_Are_ you?" Vic asked. Because he was hearing, now, a bit of a whistling sound every time Mac breathed in and out—and he couldn't remember that happening before. "Li Ann said, this morning, she felt like someone was kneeling on her chest. And she said she felt _worse_ at the end of the day."

"I'm getting better," Mac insisted. "I'm not hacking up phlegm anymore."

"But how do you feel?"

Mac glared at him. "Like I want to be alone."

Vic left him alone.

More accurately, Vic left Mac and Taylor alone. 

He stopped in the hallway to watch for a minute, though. To see if they were okay. 

Taylor wrapped her arms around Mac's neck again, sleepily patting his cheek. Mac started his circuit of the empty living/dining space, cuddling her and rubbing her back.

Vic resolved that tomorrow, he would make sure that Mac and Li Ann rested. Mac might be mad at Vic and unwilling to listen to him reasonably about anything right now, but he'd listen to Li Ann. She had the same symptoms, and was willing to talk about them. If he had to, Vic could use Li Ann as a barometer for Mac.

Alone, Vic went back into Taylor's room, laid himself down on one of the foam pads, and let himself drift uneasily back to sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Vic woke up feeling chilly, lonely and stiff. The quality of the light coming through the uncurtained window indicated that he'd slept in, relative to yesterday. It was probably past eight, at least.

Mac and Taylor were curled up asleep on the other foam pad, six feet away from Vic. Taylor's cheek was pressed up against the patch of hair on Mac's chest. Her thumb was in her mouth, and her lips were moving very slowly in a faint suggestion of sucking. Mac's arm was slung lightly over her hips.

Vic took a moment to consider whether it was unseemly for a seasoned thirty-six-year-old secret agent to feel jealous of a two-year-old.

Answer: probably, yeah.

Anyway, a case could be made that Taylor was having the shittiest week so far of any of them. Vic couldn't exactly begrudge her some cuddles. And it was great that she seemed to be bonding with Mac; maybe today she'd spend _less_ than fifty percent of her waking hours wailing for her real parents.

Vic decided to go make some coffee and maybe breakfast. He stood up quietly, but when he walked across the room the floorboards creaked, and Taylor stirred. A moment later she was whimpering, and sitting up. Mac startled awake a moment later; Vic could see him go tense, and then his eyes focused on Taylor and he relaxed again.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you," Vic said.

"What time is it?" Mac asked, sitting up. Taylor climbed into his lap, curled up, and stuck her thumb in her mouth, looking sullen.

Vic found his watch where he'd left it on the floor near his clothes. "Eight twenty-four. Wow, Taylor really slept in today. What time did you get her down, finally?"

Mac shrugged. "Dunno, but the sun was coming up."

"Jesus," Vic said. "Want some coffee?"

* * *

The door to the adults' room was still closed, so they left Li Ann to sleep for as long as she wanted.

"Hey, you weren't coughing when you woke up," Vic pointed out optimistically as he measured coffee grounds into the filter for himself. Mac, in the end, had decided to make ginger tea instead; it was already steeping in the pot. "Are you feeling better?"

Mac wrinkled his nose. "Yeah, I think I finally coughed up the last of the soot yesterday." He was sitting on the floor with Taylor, watching her feed herself mushed banana from a plastic bowl. So far most of it was ending up on her shirt.

"And did you sleep okay?"

"Yeah, for three whole hours."

"I mean—no more nightmares?"

"_No_." Mac shot him a warning glare. "And I don't want to talk about it in front of Taylor, so let it go, okay?"

Last night Mac hadn't wanted to talk about the nightmare when they _weren't_ in front of Taylor, either. But Vic wasn't going to push him on that one. By now Vic was familiar with all of Mac's recurring nightmares; if Mac wanted to keep freezing him out by not telling him which one he'd been having last night, fine. Vic actually was trying to make a slightly different point. "Look, I understand it was really hard to get Taylor to sleep last night. But maybe it's not a good idea to let her sleep with you? Considering the night terrors. Think about how you try to hit me when I wake you up, sometimes."

Mac made a face. "I try to hit you when I'm half-awake because you feel like a _threat_. Taylor doesn't feel like a threat. She feels like baby. She _smells_ like a baby. Have you noticed that? She has a really nice, relaxing smell." He grinned at her. "Don't you, Taytay? Don't you smell wonderful?" He picked her up under the armpits and nuzzled her belly, getting bananas on his nose. Taylor giggled. "Ew," Mac amended, curling his upper lip, "I take that back. Actually you smell terrible."

Vic raised an eyebrow. "Diaper?"

"Yup." Mac held Taylor out towards Vic, looking hopeful. "I think this one's going to be expert-level."

"How are you going to develop your skills if you don't practice?" Vic asked, mildly.

"Yeah, but I don't think I can—" he broke off with a choking cough, which turned into a rattling, hacking fit. He had to put Taylor down; she wrinkled her nose in concern and stared at him, sucking her thumb.

Vic eyed Mac suspiciously. "Did you just have a coughing fit on purpose, to get out of changing a poopy diaper?"

Mac shook his head.

"Hm," Vic said, not entirely convinced. "Well, I'll do it this time."

* * *

It wasn't like they had any big _plans_ for the day (or the week, or the month). After the diaper change, Vic made breakfast while Mac rolled a ball back and forth with Taylor on the living/dining room floor. They ate sitting in a circle on the kitchen linoleum, and Mac let Taylor pick bits of egg and bacon off his plate. Figuring Li Ann would be happier if she got to sleep for as long as she wanted, Vic put her portion in the fridge to save for later.

Finally, at eleven, Mac said he was going to check on Li Ann.

"All right," Vic shrugged. "But if she bites your head off, don't come running to me."

Mac went into the green bedroom—and returned a few seconds later, looking alarmed. "She's not there."

"What?" Reflexively, Vic went and looked for himself. Which was admittedly pointless, since it's not like Mac could have _missed_ spotting Li Ann in an empty room.

Mac, meanwhile, had already gone out the front door of the house. "The car's still here," he announced from the front porch.

"Maybe she went for a walk?" Vic suggested.

"For the entire morning? In the middle of nowhere? With a hurt knee?"

"Well, nobody would've broken in, taken her, and left the rest of us undisturbed," Vic pointed out. "Maybe she went to see Pat's studio."

They trooped next door, all three of them. Mac carried Taylor.

Nobody answered the door at Pat's place, and Vic noticed that the rusty blue pick-up truck that had previously been in the driveway was gone. "I guess she's out," he said.

"I could get us in," Mac offered.

Vic rolled his eyes. "How would that help? I'm sure Pat didn't kidnap Li Ann and lock her in her closet."

"You never can tell with people," Mac said darkly.

"Let's check the studio out back, anyway, just in case," Vic said.

They easily found the studio—a small wooden outbuilding half-way between the house and the river. Its door was locked from the outside with a cheap-looking combination lock.

"I can _definitely_ get us in there," Mac said, eyeing the lock. "_You_ could probably crack that one."

"Again—_zero_ probability that Li Ann is locked up in there," Vic said. "Let's not invade our nice neighbour's privacy."

Mac rapped on the outer wall of the studio. "Hello? Anybody in there?" Silence. He shrugged. "Let's try Sonny's place."

Vic was not enthusiastic about going and knocking on Sonny-the-drug-dealing-biker's door, but considering that they had only two neighbours, it was the next logical step.

They walked briskly back past their own house and over to Sonny's, and climbed his front stairs. There was a bike parked in the front driveway, covered with a tarp, and a black Dodge ram. "Looks like he's home, at least," Vic commented, ringing the doorbell.

"Vic—" Mac gasped, "...take...Taylor..."

Vic turned towards Mac. "Huh?"

Mac thrust Taylor at him; Vic raised his arms automatically and grabbed her. Mac immediately hunched over with his hands on his knees, wheezing.

"Wait, what? Mac, what's happening?" Vic asked, his momentary confusion turning to sharp concern.

Mac just shook his head. He seemed to be struggling to breathe in and out.

He'd been coughing a little on the way over, but it hadn't seemed too bad. Vic had barely noticed. Now—_fuck_, what was happening?

The door opened, revealing a burly man with a shaved-bald head, bushy grey eyebrows, and salt-and-pepper moustache and goatee. He was wearing nothing but cut-off denim shorts, and his arms and belly were heavily tattooed. He had a good thick pad of chest hair, too, wiry and grey. Vic recognized him as the guy who'd been manning the barbecues at the Canada Day party; presumably Sonny, but Vic had never been introduced. "Who're you?" the man asked in a gruff voice, squinting at Vic curiously.

"Uh, we're the new neighbours from next door," Vic started awkwardly, with a worried sideways glance at Mac. "We were wondering if our friend—uh, I mean Li Ann, _his_ wife, my friend—"

"Hey, are you okay?" presumably-Sonny interrupted, addressing Mac directly.

Mac gave a jerky nod, and a thumbs-up. But meanwhile he was still hunched over, and his laboured in-and-out breaths were making a truly alarming whistling noise.

"That just started happening," Vic said. "Just now. Um, I think maybe we should go home."

"I think your buddy should come in and sit down for a minute," Sonny said. "That sounds like an asthma attack he's having there."

"Ah..." Wide-eyed, Vic teetered indecisively between two bad choices—entering the drug-dealing biker's home, or trying to get Mac all the way down the stairs and over to their house and then—then what? They didn't even have a phone to call 911, if it came to that. "He doesn't have asthma. He's getting over a—" looking at Mac, Vic realized he'd better upgrade their cover story from 'bad cold'—"lung infection."

Sonny, meanwhile, had stepped right past Vic to get an arm around Mac, and Mac was letting himself be led into Sonny's house. So that took the decision out of Vic's hands. Keeping Taylor propped up on his hip, he followed them in.

Sonny's house had the same layout as the safe house, but it looked very different what with all the furniture and clutter. The living room area, to the right of the entrance, had a couch and two beat-up plush armchairs clustered around a coffee table, with a TV off to one corner. Sonny steered Mac into the nearest armchair, and then peered into his face. "Huh," he said. "I'm going to make coffee. You try to get him to sit up straight and breathe slower."

"_Coffee_?" Vic repeated. Sonny's priorities seemed a little skewed. The breathing slower advice sounded good, though. Mac was taking fast, shallow, panicky breaths, and his lips were starting to look a little blue. "Okay, Mac, _look_ at me. Sit up." Setting Taylor down, Vic stood over Mac and took one of his hands in both of Vic's own, held it up and squeezed it. "Look me in the eye. I want you to breathe like—like when we meditate. In, out, _slowly_."

Mac followed the instruction, at least partly. He sat back, locking his gaze on Vic's. His eyes were showing a lot of white. He looked scared. Taylor, meanwhile, latched herself on to Mac's knee and looked fretful, but she didn't start to wail. She put her thumb in her mouth.

"In, out. Slow it down," Vic kept repeating. It seemed to be working; Mac's breaths were still laboured and wheezing, but they weren't so _fast_, and the scary blue tinge on his lips had gone away.

"Here," Sonny said, coming back with a mug of black coffee. "Get him to drink this."

"I'm not sure this is really the time..." Vic said tightly. Mac's eyes were still locked on his, as Mac struggled to breathe. The rest of the world was only vaguely discernible in the periphery, and Vic didn't have much attention to spare for drug-dealing bikers with weirdly insistent hospitality rituals.

"Seriously, get him to drink it," Sonny said, thrusting the mug in between Mac and Vic. "My second ex-wife had asthma. If she got caught out without her inhaler, she'd drink coffee. The caffeine helps open the airways."

"He doesn't _have_ asthma," Vic repeated, but he let go of Mac's hands to take the mug.

Sonny shrugged. "It _sounds_ like an asthma attack. You want me to call an ambulance?"

Mac shook his head, and reached for the coffee.

"No," Vic said, even though he really wanted to say yes. Smoke inhalation injuries, bullseye bruises—all it needed was for Mac's medical report to fall into the hands of Chinese intelligence, and they'd have commandos breaking in through their windows at midnight. (Turnabout is fair play, after all.)

So Mac drank the coffee—clutching the mug in two hands, not lowering it between sips. Taylor continued to hang onto his knee, sucking her thumb. And Vic, eventually, perched at the near edge of the couch, cornerwise to Mac, wishing he could tell him right now how much he loved him and how worried he was. (The dead guard couldn't possibly matter when Mac couldn't _breathe_.)

Finally, Mac's breathing eased. Maybe it was the coffee, or maybe whatever had just happened had passed naturally on its own. "Thanks," Mac said, looking at Sonny. "That helped."

"You just sit there," Sonny said. "I'll get you another cup of coffee to be on the safe side. Vic, you want a beer?"

Vic shook his head, thinking of their temporarily aborted search for Li Ann. "No thanks. But if you have any soft drinks...?"

Taylor climbed up into Mac's lap and started playing with the collar of his black t-shirt. Vic wondered for a moment if he should take her—Mac couldn't be feeling very well, yet—but actually Taylor's presence seemed to be soothing Mac as much as vice versa. Mac looked down at her with a quirked grin. "Yeah, I'm okay, Taytay. Thanks for sticking with me," he said.

"Daddy pway? Pway wif Taytay?" she asked.

Vic blinked. "Is she asking you to _pray_?"

Mac looked confused for a moment too. Then he said something to her that Vic couldn't make out—it wasn't in English.

Taylor replied, also not in English.

"Oh," Mac said then, sounding enlightened. "She wants to _play_."

"Her, uh, Cantonese is better than her English?" Vic hazarded.

Mac shook his head. "If anything it's _worse_. But if you put them together, sometimes you can triangulate on what she's actually saying."

"And you figured this out when?" Vic asked in an undertone, casting an eye over towards the kitchen; Sonny had finished fiddling with his coffee maker, and was opening the fridge.

"Last night about four a.m.," Mac whispered as Sonny came back.

"You speak Chinese?" Sonny asked, looking curious. He handed Mac the fresh coffee mug, and gave Vic a cold can of Pepsi.

"Cantonese," Mac corrected him in an off-hand way. "I was raised in Hong Kong." He took a sip of coffee, looking a lot more relaxed about this cup than the last one.

Vic realized, with a jolt of anxiety, that what with one thing and another they never had gotten around to conferring about their cover stories in detail. And he didn't know what Mac or Li Ann might have told anyone at Sonny's party. He cracked the tab on his Pepsi, wondering how quickly they could get _out_ of here. Was Mac ready to walk yet?

Taylor, meanwhile, patted Mac's cheek and said, "Taytay wanna pway. Wanna pway wif Daddy."

Sonny grinned hugely, showing yellow teeth. "Isn't she a little princess. And she looks just like you."

Vic wrinkled his nose, scratched his cheek. "Yeah, people say that a lot," he murmured. Mac's lips twitched, but he managed not to laugh.

"All of mine took after their mothers, thank Christ," Sonny added.

"_Pway!_" Taylor repeated, stridently. Her patting of Mac's cheek escalated to more of a slap.

"Ow," Mac winced, and caught her hand. "Sorry, Taytay, I'm not ready to play yet."

"Hang on," Sonny said. "I'll get something for her." He headed off back towards the bedrooms.

"How are you doing?" Vic whispered, as soon as Sonny was out of earshot.

"Okay," Mac whispered back. "I think the caffeine's helping. Coffee, who knew? Thank God for wise old bikers."

"Yeah," Vic said, "but we need to get out of here. Li Ann's obviously not here. We have to keep looking for her."

Mac nodded. "Right. Okay. Don't worry, I'll be fine."

Taylor, meanwhile, squirmed down off his lap and went wandering over to the coffee table. Vic's eyes followed her—and then he lunged to grab her before she could complete her motion to grab the half-rolled joint that was sitting in the middle of the table.

Taylor let out a frustrated wail.

Jesus. The sooner they could get out of here, the better.

Just then, Sonny reappeared. He was grinning and waving a doll—a naked Cabbage Patch Kid with woolly red hair. "Here," he said. "Think Taytay might like this?"

"Actually we were just saying we should get on our way," Vic said. "Mac's feeling better, and we don't want to bother you any longer."

"Dowwee!" Taytay squealed, waving her hands in Sonny's direction. "Taytay wan dowwee!"

"Well, consider it a housewarming gift," Sonny said, coming over and handing the doll to Taylor before Vic could object. Taylor grabbed the doll and hugged it tight around the neck, then planted a smoochy kiss on its forehead. So clearly, this doll was coming home with them. "Hey, what was it you came over here for, anyway?"

"We were looking for Li Ann," Mac said. "You met her at the party, remember? Did she come by this way earlier?"

Sonny shook his head. "Haven't seen her."

"Are there any walking trails around here? Through the woods?" Vic thought to ask.

"Nope." Sonny shrugged. "Before my old dog Gravy died, I used to walk him up on the shoulder of the highway. Maybe she went along there."

"Okay, we'll check there next," Vic said. "Thanks."

* * *

Sonny saw them off with a cheerful "Drop by any time!"

"Isn't he nice?" Mac chirped as they walked down the stairs. Vic was carrying Taylor, and Taylor was carrying the doll.

Vic clenched his jaw. "Sure. Did you notice I barely managed to stop Taylor from eating a fistful of _pot_ from his coffee table?"

"Oh, good catch on that one," Mac acknowledged. "I don't think Geneviève and Huang would be very happy if they heard we got their two-year-old stoned." He frowned. "Do you really think Li Ann would've gone walking along the highway? With her hurt knee?"

"Well, I don't know where else to check," Vic said. "If she was feeling really stir-crazy, maybe? She could've picked up a stick to help her walk. She can be about as stubborn as you can, you know."

Mac stopped in his tracks. "_Fuck_."

"What?"

"What if the same thing that just happened to me, happened to her? What if she went out walking on her own and it happened?"

"Oh _fuck_," Vic swore, with feeling. "Okay. Um. I'll take the car. I'll drive up and down the highway and look for her."

"I'm coming too," Mac said.

"No, you go back to the house and make coffee," Vic said. "Just in case. Anyway, if she comes back, there should be somebody there. And can you look after Taylor?"

"Yeah," Mac said. "Give her to me. Go!"

* * *

Vic drove up and down the Trans-Canada highway for twenty minutes. He did not find Li Ann.

He drove much farther in each direction than it was reasonable to think that she'd limped. He didn't see her, or anyone else on foot.

So he headed back to the safe house, feeling extremely anxious. When he got there, he noticed that the blue pick-up truck was back in Pat's driveway. So he went next door and rang the doorbell.

"Hello?" Pat smiled when she opened the door. Her house had the same interior layout as the safe house, too. Her place looked a lot cozier and more wholesome than Sonny's. The art on the walls depicted beautiful natural landscapes and animals, rather than motorbikes and heavy metal bands. "Vic! Can I help you with something?"

"I was wondering if you'd seen Li Ann," Vic said, trying to sound casual about it, rather than frantic.

"Oh, yes. She came by this morning to use our phone. When she told us she was planning to take a cab into Sudbury, we said we'd drive her. We were heading up for groceries, ourselves."

A wiry grey-haired man in beige slacks and a buttoned shirt waved at Vic from the couch. "Nice to meet you, Vic! I'm George."

"Sudbury," Vic repeated. He felt a great wash of relief, followed immediately by concerned confusion. Li Ann wasn't curled up in a ditch, suffocating—hooray! But why had she hitched a ride to _Sudbury_?

"Yes, she had us drop her off at the Greyhound bus station," Pat said. "Didn't she tell you she was headed there?"

Vic forced his face into a weak grin. "Ah, we were asleep when she left. But she probably left a note somewhere. I guess we didn't see it. Did she say where she was going?"

Pat looked a little perturbed. "No. But she can only have been planning a day trip—she didn't have any bags with her."

That wasn't surprising, considering they didn't _own_ any bags.

"Is everything all right?" Pat asked, peering at him closely.

"Yes!" Vic said much too brightly, wishing he could lie as smoothly as Mac could. "Everything's fine. Thanks for your help."

* * *

"Pat and George drove Li Ann to the Greyhound bus station in Sudbury this morning," Vic announced as soon as he'd opened the door of the safe house.

Mac was sitting on the floor in a corner of the living room, leaning into the join of the walls. He had a coffee mug in his hands. Taylor was in the middle of the room, spinning in circles clutching the doll Sonny had given her.

"The _bus station_?" Mac repeated, standing up. "What the hell was she going there for?"

Vic shook his head. "She didn't say. Not to Pat and George, anyway."

Mac walked over to the kitchen. Opened one of the high cupboards. Pulled out the two manila envelopes, and examined their contents carefully. Put them back. Braced himself on the counter. "She took all her ID," he said. "And three thousand dollars."

Vic pulled the car keys back out of his pocket. "We can be in Sudbury in under an hour."

Mac just shook his head. "Vic, she's gone."

"She has, what, a four-hour head start? Somebody at the bus station will be able to tell us where she went."

"Vic, she's _gone_!" Mac repeated, this time smacking his fist into the counter for emphasis.

"But—" Vic stared at Mac, somehow not quite able to parse what he was saying. "She wouldn't just _leave_ us."

Mac wrapped his arms tightly around his chest. "Well, apparently she did."

"Without even saying anything to us?" This made no sense. "Why would she _do_ that?"

"It's the perfect time," Mac said. "Cash on hand, clean ID to get out of the country. No check-ins at the Agency to miss. Not like I wasn't thinking about doing the same thing."

"You were _what_?" Vic choked out.

"I _told_ you! I want out, I've _always_ wanted out."

It was true, Mac sometimes expressed frustration with their situation. Vic usually took that the way he took complaints about the weather—he understood that Mac needed to vent, but it's not like they could _do_ anything about it.

The morning after their raid on the cabin, though, when they'd been waiting behind the abandoned Texaco station for the Director to show up, Mac had sounded very serious about leaving. And— "Li Ann heard you," Vic remembered. "Threatening to run. When we were talking outside of the car, after we rescued Taylor." He shook his head. "But I can't believe she would just _leave_ like that, without even saying goodbye. Jesus, how could she leave _you_?"

Mac hugged himself tighter. "She probably thought I wouldn't want to leave you."

_And would you have?_ The question hung unasked in the air between them. Vic was not going to ask it—not when he was so afraid of what the answer might be. (The kick of the gun. The dead guard. He'd done it _for_ Mac, _fuck_.)

But actually there was an even worse question to ask, and Vic realized that he really did have to ask this one. "_Will_ you?"

Mac looked momentarily confused, which was reassuring because it meant that his thoughts had not been travelling along this line as quickly as Vic's had.

"_Will_ you run?" Vic clarified, feeling the muscles in his shoulders tense up. "Cash on hand, clean ID. You've been _thinking_ about it. Will I wake up tomorrow and find out I'm solo-parenting Taylor until whenever the hell the Director comes back for us?"

There was an uncomfortably long pause before Mac said: "No." He didn't elaborate. Just stood there, hugging himself, staring at the floor.

Okay. Vic decided to take that at face value. He wrenched his thoughts around to what had to come next. What adjustments needed to be made to their suddenly Li Ann-less operation?

Honestly, Li Ann's departure didn't make all that much practical difference. In terms of the mission, all they needed to do was sit tight and take care of a two-year-old. What with her hurt knee, Li Ann had barely even been helping with the childcare so far—her failed attempt to put Taylor to sleep last night having been the one notable exception.

There was the question of what to tell the neighbours.

"We'll say she's visiting her sister," Vic decided, thinking out loud. "In Vancouver. We'll hint that you two were having marital problems. Stress over the baby, whatever. My parents fought all the time after Alice was born."

"Okay, sure," Mac said, and coughed.

Vic eyed Mac with concern, but it didn't turn into a fit or anything; he just coughed a couple of times. "Hey, maybe you should go have a nap," Vic suggested, anyway. "I'll watch Taylor. There's really nothing we need to do now—" nothing to be done about Li Ann's gaping absence in their empty house "—and you've had a rough morning."

But Mac shook his head. "I can't nap. I just drank five cups of coffee."

"_Five_?"

"Well, the two cups at Sonny's place helped, so..." he shrugged.

Vic looked at Mac carefully, thinking about the implications of that. "Mac, are you still having trouble breathing?"

"No, it's fine now."

_Fine_, right. Mac's automatic response, no matter what. "Let me rephrase that," Vic said. "Tell me about the wolf situation."

Mac's eyes widened, because _that_ was a code phrase. And when Vic gave him that phrase, Mac wasn't supposed to lie.

It required trust. Vic wasn't sure where they were right now, trust-wise. (The kick of the gun in his hand. Mac, afterwards: 'I couldn't do it, I literally couldn't. And I'm not sure what to think about the fact that you _could_.' But Vic did it for _him_.)

"My chest hurts," Mac said, after a long pause. "Not like on Sonny's doorstep, though."

"Is that when it started?"

"No. It's been hard to breathe ever since the fire."

"But you're not coughing as much as you were. Is it getting better?"

Mac shrugged. "It's different. Yesterday we stopped coughing up soot. My lungs don't feel so _irritated_ now. But it's more like a tight band around my chest."

"Is _that_ getting worse?"

Another shrug. "It's worse than yesterday, but not worse than this morning."

"And the thing that happened on Sonny's doorstep. Did you have any warning about that?"

Mac grimaced. "While we were walking along the lawn and climbing the stairs, I felt the band getting tighter and tighter. And then it got to the point where I could barely move air in and out."

Vic wanted to hug Mac. He wanted to hug him and take him to a hospital. _Fuck._ "Well, hopefully it'll get better on its own," he said instead, which was obviously pointless. But then one potentially helpful thought occurred to him: "Hey, remember when you had the broken rib in the winter? The breathing exercises you had to do?"

Mac wrinkled his nose. "I _hated_ those."

"Yeah. Maybe you should start doing them again. Can you take a deep breath?"

"Not without starting to cough," Mac said, looking wary.

"Well, _exactly_." Vic crossed his own arms, giving Mac a stern look. "If you get an infection, you'll _have_ to go to the hospital, and then maybe we're blown. So you'd better do the fucking exercises."

"Okay." Mac wilted. "Sure, you're right. Do you want me to go do them now?"

"Yes," Vic decided. If Mac was ready to be submissive, he was probably feeling like complete crap. "Do the exercises, and then lie down and rest, even if you can't sleep. We've got nothing else to do—you might as well concentrate on healing."


	6. Chapter 6

It was amazing how easy it was to avoid really talking to each other, even cooped up in an empty house in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do.

Well, there wasn't _nothing_ to do. Looking after Taylor took an astounding amount of energy. Left on her own to play with their sparse selection of toys, she quickly got cranky and bored and started to howl. Vic took her outside so that Mac could rest; she tore around the backyard, with occasional pauses to try to put dirt, grass, and ants in her mouth.

Vic didn't even manage to _think_ about making supper until Mac finally emerged from the house around six in the evening. "Don't let her eat dirt or fall in the river," Vic said, and went inside to cook.

After supper, Vic showed Mac how to give Taylor a bath. They talked about the properties of baby shampoo, and their lack of bath toys. They did _not_ talk about Li Ann's absence, or dead perimeter guards.

Following the bath, her mood was cranky and fragile, and she started whining for her Mama and Baba—the first time she'd done so all day, Vic realized.

He prepared a sippy cup of warm milk for her, and Mac started walking her around the living room just like the previous night. This time, Taylor drank half of the milk and then conked out asleep on Mac's shoulder—and then, when they carefully lowered her onto a foam pad in the blue bedroom, she stayed asleep.

They crept out of the room on tiptoes.

"She didn't nap this afternoon," Vic pointed out. "And she barely stopped moving all day. She must have been exhausted."

It wasn't quite nine in the evening yet; the sun hadn't even set. "I think I'll read for a while," Mac said.

"Sure," Vic said. "We can do that."

They sat on the piled-up pair of borrowed sleeping bags in the green bedroom, that being their only option other than bare floor. This automatically put them in close proximity to each other, but Mac stubbornly sat as far from Vic as he could get, given that constraint. Vic gritted his teeth and didn't push it.

After two hours, though, when Vic's butt had gone numb in every possible sitting position, he put his book down and said, "Let's have sex."

"No," Mac said. "What if Taylor wakes up?"

"She probably won't," Vic said. "If she's slept for two hours, she's probably good until the middle of the night at least. And if she _does_ wake up, we'll just have to stop, no big deal. Parents do have sex, you know."

"Well, I know my mother did," Mac said mildly, very pointedly turning the page of his book and not looking at Vic. "I could hear her through the closet door."

"Okay, that was _wrong_." Vic grimaced. "But Taylor's in a separate room. This is fine, this is normal."

"So's not-tonight-honey-I-have-a-headache," Mac said. Flipped another page; he couldn't possibly have finished reading that one.

"_Do_ you have a headache?" Vic asked.

Mac looked up. Wrinkled his nose at him. "No." Turned his attention back to his book.

"Are you still having trouble breathing?" Vic asked. Mac had hardly been coughing since he'd emerged from his afternoon rest, so Vic had hoped he was doing better—but he hadn't asked.

"No," Mac said. "I can breathe."

"So why don't you want to have sex?"

Mac sighed and put his book down. "Okay, fuck. Let's have sex."

Vic winced. "Way to sound enthusiastic about it."

"I don't _want_ to have sex."

"_Why_?"

Mac didn't answer.

"Come on, it was good last night in the end, wasn't it?" Vic said. Cajoled. Wheedled. Maybe it hadn't been their greatest sex ever, but at least they'd both gotten off, and it was the only intimacy they'd had since (since the single gunshot in the dark, the dead guard, the bodies burning) since before this mission.

Wait. That wasn't even true. At Sonny's house, when Mac had been struggling to breathe—when Vic had been squeezing his hand and locking his gaze and coaxing him out of his frantic hyperventilation—that had been hella intimate.

And thinking about that, now, Vic suddenly just wasn't willing to let Mac's grudge keep them apart. Not when he so desperately needed to _touch_ Mac and taste him and hold him and know that he was _okay_ (flames licking Mac's body in the cabin, _no_, that was only the nightmare).

He crawled across the open sleeping bag and kissed Mac, hard.

* * *

They had sex in the empty bathtub, olive oil serving for lube again. For as long as the sex lasted, Vic felt good. Mac didn't talk dirty or take control, but he did _respond_ to Vic's touches gratifyingly.

Mac wanted to shower afterwards again. Since they were already both standing in the bathtub, Vic managed to push for showering together.

Standing under the hot water with Mac, taking turns rubbing a soapy washcloth all over each other, Vic wondered how it was possible to feel so distant even when they were touching.

After that, at the door to the adults' bedroom, Mac said, "One of us should sleep in the other room with Taylor. She might be scared if she wakes up alone."

Vic wanted to argue, but of course Mac was right. "I'll do it," he said, as a little more emptiness opened up in his chest. "You need a good night's rest more than I do."

"Okay," Mac said, and shut the door to the adults' bedroom behind himself.

* * *

Taylor _did_ wake up in the middle of the night, howling.

Vic changed her wet diaper, offered her milk (which she rejected), tried walking and cuddling her (she went rigid and kicked, and was having none of it), and finally just _sat_ with her, keeping her company while she cried.

For three solid hours.

Mostly the howls were wordless. Occasionally she cried for her parents.

A couple of times she cried for 'Daddy'. _That_ was an interesting development.

Vic considered fetching Mac, to see if he could soothe Taylor more effectively. But he decided not to. It was increasingly clear that Mac had been seriously injured in the fire. (As had Li Ann, but Li Ann was gone. There was no point in worrying about her; nothing Vic could do.) Since it was impossible to take him to a doctor, the best Vic could do for him was make sure he rested.

* * *

By lunchtime on Sunday, a part of Vic felt like they'd been doing this for years. Him and Mac, co-parenting a toddler. Taking turns playing with her, changing her diaper, feeding her snacks. Vic did the cooking, and reminded Mac to rest sometimes. Mac drank cup after cup of coffee; they'd have to go shopping again soon or else they'd run out.

They didn't talk about Li Ann. They didn't talk about the night apart. (Vic didn't know if Mac had had nightmares, but Vic had. He'd nearly thrown up, again, waking up with the smell of the burning bodies at the back of his throat.) They didn't talk about the fact that Mac deftly avoided Vic's every attempt to touch him all morning.

After lunch, Mac took Taylor outside to play, and Vic had a nap.

When he woke up, Mac and Taylor were still outside. Vic went to look for them, and got a bit worried when he saw that they weren't in the backyard. (But Mac wouldn't run away _with_ Taylor, that would be crazy.) Then he saw them in Sonny's yard.

More specifically: Taylor was in Sonny's yard, alone, playing with her Cabbage Patch doll. Mac was sitting with Sonny on the back porch, drinking beer.

"Oh _hell_," Vic groaned, and broke into a trot.

He scooped Taylor up. She'd been tearing grass out of the ground and trying to feed it to the doll. She submitted to being picked up easily enough, tucking her arms around his neck without letting go of her grip on the doll's wrist.

Then he stalked up to the porch. "You were supposed to be _watching_ her," he gritted out, without preamble.

Sonny looked bemused. Mac raised an eyebrow. "I was," he said, tracing a line in the air from his eyeball to a point in the direction of where Taylor had been playing. "She was right there."

"And you were way over _here_. And the _river_ is right there."

"It's fifty metres away," Mac said, breezily. "And her legs are _tiny_. I would've headed her off if she went that way."

Taylor, meanwhile, was trying to squirm out of Vic's arms. She waved towards Mac. "Daddy!"

Mac beckoned, lazily. "C'mere, Taytay." He put his can of beer down on the white plastic table that sat between his and Sonny's chairs, and held out his arms.

Vic gave up the struggle to hold on to Taylor. She scrambled up the steps—bracing her hands on the wood, doll included—and then crawled into Mac's lap. Vic climbed the stairs in her wake. 

"Pah-pah-saw," Taylor said then, waving at a bowl on the table.

"You want more applesauce? Okay." Mac pulled the bowl closer, picked up the spoon that was in it, and offered it to Taylor.

Sonny squinted up at Vic. "Want a beer?"

"No," Vic said. "We should go."

"C'mon, Vic, pull up a chair." Mac shot him an easy grin. "Sonny's been telling me stories of his misspent youth. He was a real wild child."

Vic really didn't want to hang out with Sonny. But he didn't want to leave Taylor alone with Mac and Sonny, either, and now that Taylor was ensconced on Mac's lap eating applesauce, Vic couldn't think of a pretext to extract her. Certainly not without making their family dynamic look any odder than he already had by coming up here and scolding Mac about his lack of attentiveness in childcare—considering it was Mac who was supposed to be her father, while Vic was just some no-official-status friend of the family.

Reluctantly, Vic brought over a chair.

Sonny dove into a rambling anecdote about a series of increasingly elaborate and impractical schemes he and some of his friends had come up with in the seventies to keep the local police constable away from their grow-op.

"But then the moose fell _off_ the truck on the way back to town," he related finally, with an air of coming to the punchline. "So we said, to hell with it. And what did we do? We _bribed_ him." He slapped his knee and laughed. "It worked for twenty years!"

Mac laughed appreciatively. 

Vic let out a weak chuckle. "So yeah, we should really get going," he tried again, since they'd hit a natural break in the storytelling.

"Not _now_, Vic," Mac said. "Taytay's napping."

It was true; halfway through the grow-op story, Taylor had dropped her spoon, and now she was sprawled across Mac's lap, eyes closed and thumb in her mouth.

"She'll nap better at home," Vic murmured.

"She'll wake _up_ if I move her," Mac retorted.

"Vic," Sonny said definitively, "let me get you a beer."

* * *

Sonny had a _lot_ of anecdotes. Lots of humorous misadventures in the context of drug-dealing in Sudbury in the sixties and seventies.

Vic nursed his beer and tried to maintain a neutral facial expression.

He watched Mac interacting with Sonny. Mac was doing that thing he did, undercover. He was subtly mirroring bits of Sonny's body language, of his speech patterns. Sonny liked Mac a lot, it was clear. People usually did, if Mac decided that he wanted them to.

Mac was also getting Sonny to ramble on and on about himself, without Mac ever contributing much of anything in return. If this had been an interrogation, Mac would have had Sonny dead to rights by now. Vic wondered if Mac was conscious of the fact that he was doing it.

Eventually, Sonny sat back and squished his second empty beer can, cracked another one open, and said to Mac, "I don't think your friend approves of me."

Mac glanced sideways at Vic with a little ironic grin. "Don't mind him. He's just a bit uptight."

Vic inwardly cursed Mac for dragging them into this situation. They were stuck with Sonny as their neighbour for as long as they were at the safe house, but they didn't have to court trouble by interacting with him more than the absolute necessary minimum. Mac seemed to be trying to make _friends_ with him, and that was worrying.

So Vic decided to say something true, and try to put a little distance back in this relationship. "I'm not _uptight_," he said. "I just didn't think the stories about Sonny ducking felony drug charges for thirty years were very _funny_."

"_I_ thought they were funny," Mac said. "Lighten up, Vic. Sonny, you haven't ever killed anybody, have you?"

Vic froze. _What the hell, Mac?_

But Sonny didn't seem taken aback by the question. He chuckled and said, "Fuck no. I never ran _that_ kind of an operation. Maybe I scared some guys, some times. Made them shit their pants a bit. But killing? Nah. That's for TV and the big cities."

Mac flicked Vic a significant look. "Do you think you could? If you got in a fight, if it was you or the other guy, say."

"Yeah, I think I could," Sonny said easily. "In a fight. If I had to."

"What if it wasn't a fight?" Mac asked. "Like, imagine if somebody wanted some guy dead and they told you to do it. And the guy was tied up, and you had a gun. An untraceable gun, say—you're not worried about getting caught. Hypothetically. Do you think you could pull the trigger?"

(_What are you doing Mac what are you doing Mac what are you doing Mac?_)

Vic was frozen in his chair.

Sonny, though, just sat back and sipped his beer. "In cold blood? Hah. Nope. I don't think I could ever do _that_. Don't think I'd want to. Why, do you think _you_ could?"

Mac shook his head. "No, I'm pretty sure I couldn't." He turned to Vic. "What about you, Vic? Do you think you could do it? Hypothetically?"

Vic stood up jaggedly, knocking into the table. "I have to make _supper_," he said, and fled.

He made it all the way back to the safe house, went into the bathroom, shut the door without turning the light on, and stood there, shaking.

(Shaking with rage? Shame? Shock?)

(The kick of the gun in his hand. The weight of the body on his shoulder. The smell of rain coming, on the wind.)

(He hadn't had a choice.)

Finally he turned on the lights and splashed water over his face. He heard the back door opening. He heard the patter of toddler feet running past the bathroom door.

Vic emerged from the bathroom and saw Mac following Taylor down the hall. "Oh, hi," Mac greeted him casually. "I thought you were getting supper started."

And something inside of Vic ... snapped.

He grabbed Mac by the shoulder as he went by, spun him back around, _slammed_ him against the wall, pinned him there with a forearm across his chest. Mac's eyes widened and his nostrils flared, but he didn't try to escape.

"What the _FUCK_ was that!?" he shouted into Mac's face.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Mac lied, calmly.

"You need to SHUT the FUCK UP about that FUCKING GUARD, and stop giving me SHIT because I did YOUR FUCKING JOB." There was a red haze at the edge of Vic's vision, and a ringing in his ears. One little part at the back of his mind knew that he was going to regret this, but it felt _so good_ to _yell_.

"He was TIED UP," Mac yelled back, abandoning the pretense that he hadn't been talking about the guard. "He was begging for his life! I thought I knew who you were, but I _don't_!"

"I'm an _agent_," Vic growled, slapping the wall next to Mac's head with his free hand. Mac flinched. "Same as _you_. And we had _orders_. We were _rescuing_ a _child_. That guard would've killed _us_ if he could've. And you can fucking well stop acting like I'm the only one with blood on his hands. We killed _all_ the guards. You shot one in the _head_ through the _skylight_!" 

"I KNOW that!" Mac shouted. "You think I don't KNOW THAT!?" He planted his hands on Vic's chest and shoved, hard, so Vic careened backwards and slammed against the opposite wall of the hallway. The back of Vic's head knocked against the wall hard enough that he saw stars for a moment. Mac, meanwhile, had doubled over, coughing.

"You're sure _acting_ like you don't!" Vic shouted, too angry to care about the coughing fit. He knew Mac could still hear him. He could fucking well _listen_. "You're freezing me out and treating me like _shit_ and hinting to our fucking drug-dealing biker neighbour that I'm a cold-blooded killer!"

"I just want some fucking _space_!" Mac gasped out, between coughs.

"Okay then I'll GIVE YOU SOME!" Vic shouted, and stalked-almost-ran to the front door. Slammed it behind him.

Stood there, in the sunshine. The air was hot, and sweet with the scents of grass and wildflowers. The only sounds were the rustling of leaves in the gentle breeze, the buzzing of flies, distant birdsong, and Vic's own harsh breathing.

Breathing. Fuck. _Fuck._

Vic yanked the door open and went back into the house. Mac was still where Vic had left him in the hallway, but sitting cross-legged on the floor now, his back propped up against the wall. Taylor was standing next to him, patting his hair and looking worried.

Vic went over and crouched in front of Mac. "Hey, are you okay?"

He was not. His breath was wheezing in and out, and his eyes were very wide.

"Um, I'll make coffee," Vic said, quickly. "Try to slow it down, okay? In, out." He ran into the kitchen and started throwing open cupboard after cupboard looking for the coffee tin. He couldn't find it anywhere. "Mac!" he yelled. "Where's the coffee?!" But of course Mac couldn't answer. Vic ran back out into the hallway, kneeled in front of Mac. "Mac, where did you put the coffee tin?"

"Freezer," Mac managed in a laboured whisper, between an in-wheeze and an out-wheeze. Taylor had crawled into his lap and was lying with her head on his thigh, sucking her thumb and looking distraught. Vic wondered for a second if he should take her, but decided that she and Mac probably weren't doing each other any harm.

Vic ran back to the kitchen, opened the freezer. There was the coffee tin.

He measured three generous scoops into the filter basket. His hand was shaking; he got grounds all over the counter. Poured in two cups of water; this coffee would come out _strong_. Flicked the power button on the coffee maker.

Slowly, slowly, the water started to gurgle.

Vic ran back out to Mac. Mac and Taylor were pretty much exactly where they'd been a minute ago, except now Mac was absently stroking Taylor's hair. He was still staring straight ahead, eyes wide and scared. He did seem to be wheezing a little more slowly than he had been a minute ago.

"Okay, you're doing great," Vic said encouragingly. He tucked himself up against Mac's side, held his free hand. Squeezed it gently. "Keep breathing. Slowly. The coffee's brewing. In ... out. You can do it."

The coffee maker emitted the bubbling hiss that signalled the end of its cycle. Vic dashed back into the kitchen, pulled a dirty mug out of the sink—there weren't any clean ones, whoops—rinsed it, poured the coffee in black, and brought it out to Mac.

"Here." Vic pressed the mug into Mac's hand, and then pulled Taylor off of Mac's lap. She came willingly enough, transferring herself to Vic and wrapping her arms around his neck.

Mac raised the coffee to his lips, two-handed, and started sipping, staring straight ahead. His breath continued to wheeze.

"Daddy sick, Daddy cough," Taylor said, and patted Vic's cheek.

"Yeah." He kissed her hand, automatically. Mac was right; she did smell good, like Alice used to when she was a baby. "Daddy's sick. I'm going to sit with him until he feels better. Do you want to go play in the living room?"

"Taytay sit wif Daddy," Taylor said.

Mac managed a faint flicker of a smile.

Taylor scrambled off of Vic's lap, but then ran away to the living room. She came back a moment later carrying her doll. She sat down on the floor in front of Mac—cross-legged, mirroring him. She held the doll and shook it. "_Kah! kah!_" she pretend-coughed. "Gaga sick."

"Gaga is the doll," Mac wheeze-whispered.

"Yeah, I got that," Vic said. "You just keep drinking your coffee and breathing."

Taylor squeezed the doll in a big hug. "Gaga feew bettah!" she announced.

* * *

It was twenty minutes before the wheezing entirely stopped. Mac drank the two cups of strong black coffee. Gaga the doll coughed and then got hugs and felt better several times, and then eventually Taylor ran off to the living room with her.

"Okay," Mac said, finally. "I'm okay now. I can breathe." He tilted his head back against the wall, rolled it sideways to look at Vic. "Thanks, by the way. For coming back."

"Uh, yeah." Vic thought back to his overwhelming anger, and felt shaky at the idea that he might _not_ have. He'd been angry enough to get in the car and drive away. "Do you think this is going to keep happening?"

"Fuck if I know," Mac said. "I hope not."

Vic hunched his shoulders. "I'm sorry I yelled at you. And shoved you."

Mac shrugged. "Sorry I kept throwing the perimeter guard in your face. You're right. I was supposed to do it. I guess I'm a shitty secret agent."

"No." Vic swallowed bile and flexed his suddenly-shaky fingers. Could he do this? Talk about the (kick of the gun, the guard's dead eyes) dead guard calmly, keep it professional? "The Director was out of line, asking you to do that. We're not her assassins."

"Murphy and Camier were two hours away," Mac pointed out.

"So one of us had to do it, yeah. But I understand now that it couldn't be you."

"I can pull a trigger, Vic. I killed a guy through the skylight. He didn't look up. He just fell."

Vic heard the bleakness in Mac's voice, and he realized something: not all of Mac's poke-poke-poking about the dead perimeter guard in the last four days had been entirely about Vic.

"You _really_ didn't have a choice," Vic said. "They were holding Taylor. We had to go in fast and lethal. We couldn't give them time to react."

"I know." Mac bit his lip. "When I went back out to the perimeter guard, I _thought_ I was going to shoot him. But I really couldn't."

_But I could._

Vic breathed with that one for a minute. Mac rested, inhaling and exhaling quietly and steadily. Taylor babbled to her doll in the living room.

Vic sat grappling with the idea that his ex-Triad boyfriend, who had been intimately familiar with guns and murder since he was a _child_ (his mother had been executed in front of him; she'd also murdered men in front of him, let's not forget that)—was incapable of killing a prisoner in cold blood.

And Vic wasn't.

The bile came up again. Vic swallowed it down.

The pieces shifted, in his head. He glimpsed a narrative that he could accept, that could salvage his sense of self. He grasped at it. "It's okay," he said. "You didn't have to. I did it for you."

Mac looked at him, maybe a little confused.

"Mac, I love you," Vic said roughly. "I would do _anything_ to protect you."

Mac swallowed. Stared at him for a minute. "You killed the guard so that I wouldn't have to?"

"I am never going to let the Director put you in that position again," Vic promised. A promise he had no real power to keep, but never mind.

"And if she _does_ ... you'll step in? Take the gun away from me and pull the trigger yourself?"

Vic wasn't sure how to read the look in Mac's eyes. "Yes," he said.

"So that's how you see yourself now?" Mac asked, very quietly. "A stone-cold killer?"

Vic clenched his jaw. "I work for the Agency. I do what the Director tells me to do."

"Uh huh." Mac coughed once, and Vic tensed. But it didn't turn into a fit. "I want some space," he said.

Vic felt his stomach clench in a slightly panicky way. Mac had said that earlier, too—had yelled it while they were fighting. "What do you mean by that, exactly? Do you want me to go to the other room for a while?"

Mac frowned, and changed his sitting position. Tucked his knees up under his chin, and stared at the opposite wall instead of looking at Vic. "I don't know what I mean," he admitted. "I just ... don't feel very comfortable around you right now."

"What?" Vic stared at him. "Fuck, Mac, what are you talking about? I would never hurt _you_." (Never mind that he'd slammed Mac into the wall half an hour ago, pinned him there and yelled at him, and then Mac couldn't breathe. _Fuck._) "And it's not like I can leave you alone for a few days. We have a kid to look after, we're in the middle of nowhere, Li Ann is gone, and you're having trouble _breathing_."

"Okay, I know, I know." Mac rocked back and forth a little, hugging his knees. "Just ... stop trying to touch me. I don't want to have sex tonight."

Vic's stomach felt like it wanted to turn itself inside out. "But how are we going to get past this if you don't even want to _try_ fixing it?"

Mac hugged his knees and rocked. Stopped. "Vic," he said in a slow, deliberate tone, "if you ever want me to feel safe with you again, you have to let me say no to sex."

"What?" Vic blinked, utterly blindsided by that one. Too confused to even be offended by the implications. "Of course you can say no to sex. I'd never try to force you, Jesus. Why would you even imply that I would?"

"I said I didn't want to have sex the last _two_ nights, and then we did anyway."

Icy chill. What the fuck? "You said _yes_," Vic reminded him.

"Uh huh," Mac said vaguely, not contradicting him. Looking away from him. Starting to rock again.

And Vic thought about it, for a minute. Thought back to his own desperate need to overcome Mac's prickly standoffishness. Mac's transparent excuses, and Vic's choice not to accept them. His choice to _push_, to say exactly what he knew he needed to say in order to get Mac to agree to have sex ... whether he wanted to or not.

"Oh my God," Vic said, his heart sinking. "I fucked up. I am so sorry, Mac."

They'd been together for six months, and Mac had never _not_ wanted sex before, and Vic had forgotten to be careful.

Vic knew that Michael had violently raped Mac sometimes—straight-up overpowered him when Mac was younger, used the force of habit and personality when Mac was older. Vic also knew that that had only actually happened a handful of times. Usually, Mac had just understood that he couldn't say 'no' to Michael, and so he hadn't. 

So yeah, Mac had agreed, eventually, to sex last night and the night before. After Vic had pushed. After Vic had ignored his 'no'.

Fucking _fucking_ fuck. Vic felt ill.

His hand started to reach out to Mac, but he stopped in time.

He desperately wanted to comfort Mac. Wanted to hug him, murmur apologies, make it better. Fix the incredibly fucked-up mess that he'd somehow managed to make.

But Mac had asked him not to touch him. And Vic was going to start listening to him.

Vic swallowed, hard. Stood up. "Uh, I'm going to make supper now. And I'll watch Taylor. You should get some rest."


	7. Chapter 7

Mac continued to sit on the floor in the hallway, hugging his knees, while Vic busied himself with food preparation. Vic wanted to check on Mac. He worried that Mac was having a breakdown like the ones he used to have. But he stayed in the kitchen. Mac had very directly and clearly asked for space, and Vic was going to give it to him.

After a while, Taylor ran over and gave Mac a hug around the neck. Vic watched from the kitchen, trying not to be obvious about the fact that he was watching. Mac unfolded himself and hugged Taylor back. He blew a raspberry on her arm, and she squealed with laughter.

"Daddy pway!" she demanded.

"Daddy needs to lie down," Mac said, a little faintly. "But you can play in the bedroom if you want."

Mac stood up slowly, bracing himself against the wall. Vic restrained himself from rushing over to give him a hand, even when Mac stumbled. Even when Mac kept a hand on the wall, leaning against it as he shuffled down the hall and out of sight.

Vic peeled carrots, and felt anxious.

After five minutes, he went to check that everything was okay.

Mac had gone into Taylor's room, and was lying on his side on one of the foam pads. Taylor was climbing on him—literally climbing, starting on one side of his torso, leaning over and scissoring her legs up and managing to slide over and down the other side of him, laughing hysterically. And then doing it again.

"Uh," Vic said after a moment of watching from the threshold, "Do you want me to take her?"

"No, it's fine," Mac said. "She's having fun.

"That doesn't look very restful for you," Vic observed.

"It's _fine_," Mac repeated.

So Vic left them to it.

He made a meatloaf. Taylor eventually came wandering out of the bedroom, trailing her doll.

"Is Daddy sleeping?" Vic asked her.

She just stuck her thumb in her mouth and stared at him.

Two-year-olds did not make very good intelligence agents.

Vic read to Taylor while the meatloaf cooked. She got cranky and started slapping the books out of his hands after a while. Vic managed to stop himself from snapping at her. "Go wake up Daddy," he said, finally. "Tell him it's time for supper."

He really wasn't sure if that would work, but it was worth a shot.

Taylor set off at a run, laughing gleefully at having been given a job to do.

She came back thirty seconds later, looked up at Vic, and announced "No Daddy!"

Vic dashed over to the bedroom door, trying not to panic. Mac _couldn't_ have left, Vic had been in the kitchen or the living room the whole time, he would have seen him—

He was there, still lying on the pad.

"Hey," Vic said, attempting to sound casual. "Supper's ready. I tried to use Taylor as a messenger, but I'm not sure it got through."

"I'm not hungry," Mac said. "Eat without me."

"Okay," Vic said, and left him alone.

* * *

Vic ate supper with Taylor, sitting on the kitchen floor. She liked the meatloaf.

After supper, Vic had to disturb Mac again, because Taylor needed a diaper change and a bath, and all of her stuff was in the room where Mac was.

"You should go to the other room if you're planning to go to sleep for the night already," Vic suggested. "I'll look after Taylor tonight."

"Okay," Mac said, without rolling over to look at Vic. "I'll move while you're giving her the bath."

* * *

The night was rough. Not so much because of Taylor—she only cried for an hour before falling asleep—but because Vic kept having the nightmare about the cabin. Mac's body in flames, every time.

The third time it happened, he decided not to go back to sleep. It was four-thirty in the morning. He went and sat in the living room and read his book.

Taylor woke up just after six. Vic had left the door to her room open, so he heard her wake-up whines, and was able to go in and pick her up before she worked her way up to a howl that would wake Mac up. She accepted Vic's cuddles, a diaper change, a sippy cup of milk and a bowl of applesauce.

Vic waited until eight before making eggs and bacon for breakfast, even though he was hungry long before that. He'd been hoping that Mac would get up.

He did knock on Mac's door once breakfast was ready—a tentative little rap of his knuckles, a "Hey, are you awake in there?" and then, hearing no response and getting worried, Vic opened the door.

Mac had zipped one of the sleeping bags up into its proper, bag-shaped form, and was curled up inside it, using the second sleeping bag, folded, as a pad underneath.

"Go away," Mac said as soon as the door opened.

"I just wanted to let you know that breakfast is ready."

"I'm not hungry."

Vic wanted to ask if Mac was okay. He wanted to go in and check on him.

But Mac had said 'go away'. And Vic was respecting his boundaries. He shut the door.

* * *

The furniture from Sears arrived around ten in the morning. Two burly men carried in the dining room table, chairs, couch, TV, and mattresses.

Mac hadn't come out of the adults' bedroom yet, so Vic left the second mattress propped up on its side in the hallway. He put the first mattress in the baby room, and Taylor spent fifteen shriekingly-happy minutes bouncing on it before Vic put the sheets on.

By eleven, Vic desperately wanted a nap. Taylor, unfortunately, didn't.

Vic tried knocking on Mac's door again, hoping for some help.

"Go away," Mac said from inside.

"I need you to take Taylor for a while," Vic called through the door. "I didn't get much sleep last night. I'm exhausted."

"Just lie down and let her climb on you," Mac advised, and did not volunteer to help.

Vic stared at the closed door. Thought about it.

Okay, Vic knew he'd fucked up. He knew he had to give Mac space now. But no matter how upset Mac was, he couldn't stay in the bedroom forever. He'd already missed two meals. And Vic needed his help looking after Taylor, which was, in fact, their _mission_.

He opened the door. "Seriously, Mac, it's _your turn_. I had her all evening, all night, and all morning."

Mac was still curled up in the sleeping bag. He was lying on his side, facing the door. He squinted balefully at Vic.

Taylor, meanwhile, rushed through the open door with a gleeful cry of "Daddeeee!" She threw herself on top of Mac, chortling.

Mac grunted, looked pained, and then finally sat up. When the sleeping bag fell away from his shoulders, Vic noticed that Mac was still wearing the same red t-shirt from yesterday.

He also noticed that Mac looked pale, and sweaty, and his eyes were shadowed. And he was shivering.

"Oh shit," Vic murmured, coming in closer and crouching a few feet from Mac. "You're sick. Why didn't you say something?"

"I'm not sick," Mac said.

Vic ignored _that_ obvious lie. "When did it start?" he asked. Also: fuck, _fuck_. If Mac had picked up an infection in his lungs, he could be in serious trouble. They really might need to take him to a hospital, and take their chances with the Chinese commandos.

"I'm not _sick_," Mac repeated. Grimaced. "The Zoloft withdrawal is kicking into high gear. That's all."

"Wait, what?" Vic asked. "You don't get withdrawal from antidepressants. Do you?"

"Yeah." The muscle in Mac's jaw twitched. "It happened before. When I went off the pills around New Year's. It feels like the flu, it lasts for a few days. It's not dangerous."

"Okay," Vic said, backing off. Worried, still, but at least it wasn't a lung infection. "Well—the furniture came. I can bring the mattress in here, set it up. You don't have to lie on the floor anymore."

"Great," Mac said, and lay back down on the floor.

Vic wrestled the queen-sized mattress in from the hall single-handedly, being careful not to squish Taylor as she 'helped'.

New Year's ... something was bothering him about New Year's.

Mac climbed out of the sleeping bag and went to the side of the room to get out of the way of the mattress's arrival. He leaned against the wall, and then gave up on standing and sank down onto the floor. He looked terrible.

"I don't remember you being sick at New Year's," Vic mentioned. That had been—God, not long before he and Mac got together. Just before the Dog Pack case. They'd all been on vacation; they hadn't been spending the days together, but they'd met up for breakfast every day at a diner, Mac and Vic and Li Ann, plus whatever guy Mac had slept with the previous night.

"It wasn't as bad as this," Mac said. "Muscle aches, a bit of nausea. I was on a lower dosage back then, remember. And I never used to remember to take the pills every day anyway, before you started reminding me."

Vic started tucking the fitted sheet around the corners of the mattress. Taylor laughed, and crawled under it. "Why did you _stop_ taking them, that time?" he asked.

Mac shrugged listlessly. "Dunno. I wasn't going home very much. I didn't think they made much difference. Anyway, I didn't know about the withdrawal at the time, I just thought I was sick."

January. Early January. Mac had been off his meds in early January.

_Fuck_. Pieces fell into place. Vic stared at Mac. "That's when you tried to _kill_ yourself."

"No," Mac said. Then, "Well, yeah. Sort of. Not because I was off the meds, though. I just couldn't ... whatever. I just couldn't." He curled up on the floor.

"Oh _fuck_," Vic breathed.

He contemplated their situation, with increasing dismay.

Mac had PTSD. Experienced suicidal depression as a symptom.

He'd been doing okay, the past few months. Between the therapy that Ben had arranged for him (behind the Director's back, which had been an adventure), and Vic reminding him to take his meds, and his unorthodox simultaneous relationships with Li Ann and Vic (Mac needed a _lot_ of love, but he'd been getting it), Mac had been pretty stable, and pretty happy.

But now everything was falling apart. Mac was having nightmares again. Li Ann was gone. They were completely isolated, and fighting. Mac had withdrawn from Vic, had been _hurt_ by Vic—and Vic couldn't even express his love without making things worse.

Vic realized, with a sinking feeling in his belly, that Mac very well might be heading into a downward spiral, here. And there wasn't much Vic could do about it.

Well, there was one thing.

"Get up," Vic said. "I'm taking you to a doctor."

"I can't _go_ to a doctor," Mac said from the floor.

"You can't go to a doctor about your _lungs_. You _can_ go to a doctor and ask for a new Zoloft prescription."

"I don't want to go to a shrink," Mac said. Still curled up on the floor.

"I'm not telling you to get therapy. I know that won't work undercover. I'm just saying—we'll go to a walk-in clinic, you tell the doctor that you just moved here and your prescription ran out. Say whatever it takes to get a new prescription. You're a secret agent, you're good at this shit, you'll think of something."

"The bruises," Mac said.

Right. Vic hadn't seen Mac shirtless since Saturday night, but he knew that those distinctive bullseye bruises would takes weeks to fade away. "Don't take your shirt off," he said. "Don't let the doctor look in your throat, or listen to your chest." Okay, elements of this plan were dodgy. "Just refuse, if it comes up. I don't think they can do anything without your consent."

"Well, _that's_ refreshing," Mac muttered.

Vic tensed, because he knew it was a dig and he was pretty sure that he didn't deserve _that_ one. But he reminded himself that Mac was in a bad state right now.

In fact—if he was this sick from the withdrawal today, he'd probably already been feeling it yesterday. When they'd had their fight. Which was reassuring, in a way. Maybe once Mac's medication was sorted out, he'd be more open to forgiving Vic for the mess that he'd made.

"Do you think you can manage a shower?" Vic asked. "Change your clothes?"

"I guess so," Mac said, not sounding very enthusiastic about it.

"You do that," Vic said. "I'll make lunch. Then we're going to Sudbury."

* * *

Vic made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch, because they were easy and fast. Taylor ate a quarter of one, which was twice as much as Mac managed.

For the drive to Sudbury, Mac sat in the front passenger side, tilted his seat back a bit, and closed his eyes. He did look a little better after the shower, but not by much. At least his hair wasn't stuck to his forehead in those sweaty little curls.

Taylor, alone in her car seat in the back, got bored after five minutes and started to howl. She kept it up the whole way into Sudbury.

At least it stopped Vic from getting sleepy. He'd never gotten that nap that he'd wanted so badly.

They drove into downtown Sudbury, such as it was, and stopped by a phone booth so that Vic could leaf through the Yellow Pages and find the address of a clinic. There was one not too far away. It was up a flight of stairs, above a Radio Shack on a commercial strip. Mac climbed the stairs slowly, leaning heavily on the banister. Vic followed him, carrying Taylor, who was still crying.

Mac registered at the front desk, handing over his OHIP card. Vic hovered at his elbow, hoping that the Director had been right about the IDs being solid.

"Macdonald ... _Xian_?" the receptionist read, squinting at Mac curiously.

"Yeah." Mac gave a weak smile. "I'm from Hong Kong originally."

The receptionist shrugged, and handed back his card. "It'll be a two or three hour wait, probably." She looked pointedly at Vic—and at Taylor, who'd been howling the whole time. "There's a playground two blocks down the road, if she'd like to stretch her legs."

Hint taken. "If we don't come back before you're done, meet us at the playground, okay?" Vic said.

Mac nodded, and headed for an empty seat in the waiting area.

* * *

The playground had a fenced-in little-kids area. Vic released Taylor into it; she squealed with joy, and went straight to climbing up the down part of the slide. Vic sat down on a bench to watch.

"Giving Mommy a break?" a woman with curly red hair asked him cheerfully, sliding in next to him. She'd just similarly deposited a small red-haired boy.

"Huh?" Vic blinked, confused. And then realized: she assumed Taylor was _his_.

Weirdly, the mistake made him feel a bit happy. And it would certainly be more trouble than it was worth to correct her. So he just smiled and said "Yeah."

* * *

After half an hour, Taylor was getting bored with the playground and Vic was having trouble keeping his eyes open. So he collected her and went looking for a coffee shop.

He felt himself perking up just walking _into_ the Tim Hortons and smelling the coffee.

And then he thought: Coffee. Caffeine. Mac hadn't had any today. Was that going to be a problem?

If he had one of those attacks in the doctor's office, he'd get prompt medical attention, that was for sure. But then the doctor would discover the smoke inhalation damage, and ... shit.

So Vic bought two coffees, got one of those trays so that he could carry them one-handed, and headed back to the clinic.

Mac was still waiting, leafing through a magazine and bouncing his knee. He looked okay. One of the chairs next to him was conveniently empty, so Vic plopped himself down in it, balancing Taylor and the coffees. "Hi," he said.

Mac looked up. "Oh, hi."

"I thought maybe you could use some caffeine."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess that's a good idea." Mac took the one Vic held out to him, and sipped. Wrinkled his nose, but said, "Thanks."

"Any idea how much longer you're going to be waiting?"

"Nah. Did Taytay get tired of the park?"

"She was getting cranky," Vic said. "Maybe we'll try again in a bit."

"Daddy!" Taylor added, and climbed from Vic's lap into Mac's. She rested her head against his shoulder, put her thumb in her mouth, and started to suck.

"Oops," Vic said, watching Taylor's eyes immediately start to drift shut. "Want me to take her back before she falls asleep on you?"

"It's okay. I'm just sitting here, either way. If I get called you'll have to take her, though."

Just then, a blond woman on the other side of the room stood up, and came over to put herself in an empty chair in the bank facing theirs. "Hi," she said. "Excuse me, I apologize in advance for asking a really intrusive question, but I was wondering whether you adopted internationally? My brother and his partner have been having so much trouble finding an agency that would be willing to work with a gay male couple."

"Uh," Vic stuttered.

"She's not adopted," Mac said. "My wife is Chinese."

"Oh!" The woman blushed beet red. "I'm _so_ sorry. I just assumed— ah, the two of you with the baby—"

"Don't worry about it," Mac said with an easy, reassuring smile. "It was a totally natural mistake to make."

"I mean, now I see it," the woman said, still blushing. "Closer up—she looks just like you."

Nobody was looking at Vic to catch him rolling his eyes.

* * *

Taylor was still asleep when Mac finally got called. He tried to ease her over onto Vic's shoulder, but she woke up and started crying fitfully. Luckily, Vic had thought ahead and packed goldfish crackers. Feeding those to Taylor one at a time, he managed to keep her reasonably quiet until Mac came back out again—which didn't take very long.

"Did you get what you needed?" Vic asked.

Mac nodded. He absently thumbed the cotton ball that had been taped inside his left elbow. "Let's go."

Back in the car, Vic drove them to a pharmacy.

"Do you have a pen?" Mac asked as they pulled into a parking space.

"Um, I think there's one in the glove compartment. Why?"

Mac retrieved the pen, and then pulled a slip of paper out of his pants pocket. Placed it on the dashboard, started writing on it.

"Jesus, Mac," Vic groaned, seeing what was happening. "Is that a _blank_ prescription?"

"It's okay," Mac said, "I know what my prescription is."

"You _stole_ a page from the doctor's prescription pad."

Mac nodded, concentrating on his writing. "It seemed like the most straightforward solution."

Vic briefly indulged himself in batting his forehead against the top of the steering wheel. "The most _straightforward_ solution would have been to tell the doctor that you needed to renew your Zoloft prescription."

"No, then he might have asked me to talk about my feelings," Mac said, and finished faking the doctor's signature with a flourish.

"So what the hell did you _say_ you were in there for?"

Mac gave him a sideways look. "I told him I'd been having unprotected anal sex and I needed a blood test."

Vic winced. "Really."

"I knew he'd have to leave the room to get the kit." Mac opened the car door. "Back in a minute."

* * *

Taylor fell asleep again on the drive back to Key River. Vic hated to think about what this was going to do to her sleeping pattern for the night.

"How are you doing?" he asked Mac. Mac had taken one of the new pills as soon as he'd gotten them, and then napped in the car while Vic took Taylor into a grocery store and picked up a few things. (With any shopping trip requiring nearly an hour's drive in each direction, Vic figured it was best to seize the opportunity.)

"Not much change," Mac said. "It should get better pretty soon, though."

"And the breathing?" Vic had picked him up another to-go cup of coffee at the grocery store, just to be on the safe side. Mac was sipping it now.

He shrugged. "Still breathing."

"Do you still have that—" Vic patted his own chest with one hand, mimed a band across it— "feeling?"

"Yeah, but I'm getting used to it."

So, Mac was still feeling like crap, in other words.

Which meant that Vic really shouldn't pick a fight right now.

And yet he couldn't stop himself.

"Why did you tell that woman at the doctor's office that we weren't a couple?" Vic asked.

"Huh?" Mac looked confused.

"The one who wanted to know how we'd managed to adopt Taylor."

"Uh, because I was sticking to our _cover story_? The one that matches our IDs? Which say that Li Ann and I are the parents?"

Vic rubbed his nose. Watched the road. "It's not like that woman with the gay brother was going to check our _IDs_. You could've just rolled with it."

"Why the hell would I have done that?"

"You used to get pissed off at me whenever I didn't want to act like a couple in public."

"Yeah, when we were in public as _ourselves_," Mac said. "Vic, we're undercover. I'm fake-married to Li Ann, the fake-mother of my fake-child. You want me to muddy the waters by having a fake gay love affair with you?"

"Well, why the hell _not_?" Vic asked. "Li Ann's gone. We might as well give everybody a plausible reason why she left."

"I don't want to have a fake affair with you," Mac said, and stared out the window.

Vic grimaced. "It's _not_ a fake affair. I mean—it's not fake. It's not an affair! You're my _actual_ boyfriend. We could ... _be_ that. In front of people."

Mac shook his head. "I don't think so," he said, quietly.

"What?"

"I think we should take a break."

"What?!" Vic's grip on the steering while got uncomfortably tight. He swallowed hard. "What the hell are you saying, Mac?"

"I'm saying let's lean into the cover story." He turned to Vic, gave him a kind of sad smile. "We're friends. You live with me and Li Ann and Taylor. Li Ann and I are married, but she's gone to visit her sister for a while. Maybe she and I are having problems. But it's not because of you."

"You're..." Vic felt an ice-water chill go through him. "You're _breaking up_ with me?"

"I guess so." Mac set his coffee in the cup-holder, then rested his head against the side window and closed his eyes. "Sorry."

"Um ... shit." Vic blinked, and tears spilled out of his eyes, which was not great since he was going a hundred kilometres per hour on an undivided highway. "Can we _talk_ about this?"

"No," Mac said. He didn't open his eyes. "I don't think so."

Vic opened his mouth to protest. Closed it again. Remembered. _Mac had to be allowed to say no._ "Okay," he said. And swiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. And kept driving.


	8. Chapter 8

In a weird way, the break-up went very smoothly.

They didn't have any more fights. The blue bedroom became Mac's bedroom; the green bedroom became Vic's. Taylor slept with Mac.

Mac didn't make any more references to the murdered perimeter guard. He treated Vic like a friendly roommate—as though he'd brought their cover identities right inside the house.

Taylor still cried for her Mama and Baba sometimes at night, or when she was very tired—but it happened less and less. She finally learned Vic's name; he was Vikah, second syllable unstressed, and while Daddy was clearly her favourite, Vikah would do in a pinch.

Vic did all the cooking. One time he tried to get Mac to make pasta, but Mac got distracted and let the water boil away to nothing, and set off the smoke alarm and permanently scorched the pot. That was _nearly_ a fight, but at the last moment Vic caught the wincing flicker of shame in Mac's eyes behind the cool mask of _whatever_-indifference, and Vic remembered that he knew perfectly well that Mac had ADHD and was bad at that kind of thing, and that he, Vic, had always told Mac that he loved him exactly the way he was.

He couldn't tell him that anymore. But it was still actually true. So he told him not to worry about the pot, and he didn't ask him to cook anymore.

Mac visited Sonny fairly often—not every day, but often enough. Vic stopped trying to convince him not to. He understood that Mac needed another adult to talk to.

Vic wished that _he_ had another adult to talk to.

Mac acquired three old, bald tires from somewhere, and some bolts and a length of chain from Sonny. He fashioned the tires into a homemade heavy punching bag, which he hung from a sturdy tree branch in the backyard. Once he had that set up, he spent hours out there every morning. He'd drink three cups of black coffee first, and then go punch and kick the bag while Taylor played with her doll in the grass. Sometimes she'd imitate him, and then fall down, giggling.

Vic worried, whenever Mac was working out. Mac said that he was careful, that he dialed back the intensity of his routine whenever his chest started getting tight. But one time Vic went outside to check on him and found him on his knees, wheezing, with Taylor standing next to him and patting his hair with a worried expression. Vic raced back into the kitchen, grabbed the emergency thermos of coffee that they'd started keeping in the fridge, and brought it out to him. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn't—Vic knew that Mac had already caffeinated himself before the workout. It took a long time for the wheezing to stop, and when it finally did, Mac accepted Vic's help getting back into the house and going and lying down on his bed.

Other than his lungs, Mac seemed to be doing okay. The Zoloft withdrawal symptoms had disappeared quickly, once Mac was back on the drug. Vic still reminded him every morning at breakfast to take his pill, even though it technically wasn't his business anymore, and Mac didn't ask him not to.

Vic didn't know whether Mac was having nightmares. They spent their nights apart. Mac seemed reasonably happy and relaxed during the days, but Vic knew him well enough to see that he was playing a role. He was Macdonald Xian, father of Taylor, friend of Viktor, neighbour of Sonny. Whatever was going on inside his head, it wasn't Vic's privilege to know anymore.

Three weeks went by like that.

And Vic was falling apart.

He dreamed about killing the guard every night. Often more than once a night. Usually the guard turned into Mac when Vic threw him into the fire. And Vic would wake up nauseous, swallowing hard.

He thought about it at odd moments of the day, too. He'd expected the memory to fade with time, to become less intrusive, but if anything he seemed to be experiencing the opposite trend. One day he let the carrots scorch while he stood holding the pan, lost in the memory of the field, the wind, the kick of the gun in his hand.

He was irritable. He suppressed it as much as he could, because he didn't want to fight with Mac, and Taylor was an innocent kid. But it leaked out around the edges. He snapped at Mac for not changing the toilet paper roll; for leaving the screen door open in the evening and letting mosquitoes into the house. He snapped at Taylor—Taylor!—for leaving her blocks on the kitchen floor for Vic to trip on.

Mac didn't snipe back when Vic got cranky with him about petty household stuff. He just let it slide sideways away from him with a calm shrug and maybe an "okay, sorry," if it seemed to be warranted. Macdonald Xian, it seemed, was a pretty chill guy. The couple of times Mac had caught Vic on the edge of shouting at Taylor, Mac had just plucked her away; "C'mon, Taytay, Vic is tired. Let's go play outside."

As July drew to a close, the dreams got worse. Or Vic's reaction to them got stronger. The first night that he actually threw up, he barely even made it to the toilet. He hadn't expected it to happen; he'd gotten used to waking up nauseous, but had always been able to get it under control.

The _third_ night that he had to run to the bathroom at 3 a.m., the kitchen light was on.

So when he was done puking and had flushed the toilet and washed his face, he didn't leave the bathroom. Just sat on the closed toilet lid.

After a while, there was a knock on the door. "Vic? Are you okay in there?"

"Just some intestinal issues," Vic said. "Don't worry about it."

"Do you need anything?"

"No. Go back to bed."

Vic counted to one hundred, silently. And then opened the door.

The kitchen light was still on, and Mac was standing at the breakfast bar with a steaming mug in his hands. "I made some ginger tea," he said.

Vic gritted his teeth. "I don't want tea. I'm going back to bed."

"Do you think it's food poisoning?" Mac asked.

"Yeah," Vic said. "Probably."

Mac frowned. "Taylor and I ate the same things you did today."

"Well ... maybe I had some leftovers from the fridge earlier."

"Did you have food poisoning yesterday, too?"

Vic looked at Mac blearily. "What? No."

"Because I thought I heard you throwing up last night, too."

"Ah..." Vic swallowed, otherwise frozen.

"Also the night before that." Mac tilted his head a little. "Vic, can we talk?"

"About what?"

"I don't know yet," Mac said. Motioning with his head for Vic to follow, he headed over to the dining room table.

Vic followed Mac's lead, pulling out a chair and sitting down across from Mac. His legs worked without much input from his head. His heart was thudding pretty hard.

Mac slid the mug of tea over to Vic. "Drink," he said.

Obediently, Vic took a sip. It was still too hot, and he didn't really like the taste of ginger.

"I _know_ you don't like it," Mac said. "But it'll settle your stomach."

"I didn't say I didn't like it."

Mac's lips twitched. "You made a face."

Vic took another sip, and made the face again. Mac seemed to be watching him closely; it was making him a little nervous. But at the same time, he was drinking it in. It was maybe the first time since Mac had broken up with him that he'd felt like Mac was looking _at_ him, rather than slightly past or through him.

"When did you start throwing up every night?" Mac asked.

Oh shit, straight to the point, then. "Ah, just the last three days." He looked down at the tea.

"Did something happen?"

(The kick of the gun in his hand. The guard's dead eyes.) "No. It's just stress. I'm ... stressed."

"Vic..." Mac trailed off and bit his lip, looking indecisive. And then, after a longish pause, he asked: "Have you been having bad dreams?"

"Well." Vic stared at his mug, feeling his shoulders tense. He hadn't wanted to talk about it. But Mac had _asked_. "Yeah."

"Since when?"

"Since when do you _think_?!" he yelled.

Oops. He hadn't meant to shout. Where the hell did that come from? And he'd splashed hot tea over his hand, too.

Mac had flinched back, startled. But then he leaned forward, looking weirdly intense. "I don't know," he said. "How about you tell me."

"Since fucking Canada Day!" Vic couldn't be sitting down anymore. The chair fell over when he stood up. He couldn't be in the house. He bolted; careened over to the front door and out of it, into the night. Down the front steps, stumbling over the uneven stones of the path. The moon was full, so he could see when he reached the road. He turned east, towards the highway. The gravel tore at his bare feet, but he ignored it. He ran.

"Vic, wait!" Mac yelled, from the door of the house.

Vic didn't know why he was running, what he was running from (the kick of the gun, the guard's dead eyes). He knew he couldn't run away from what he'd done. But he kept running.

He got as far as the highway, and then fell to his hands and knees. Panting. No ... those gasps, they were sobs actually. He was weeping. Kneeling on the gravel shoulder of the Trans-Canada highway in the middle of nowhere, at three in the morning. Sobbing so hard he could barely breathe.

He didn't notice Mac arriving, but when he finally gasped his way into silence, Mac was there. Crouching next to him.

"What are you dreaming about?" Mac asked, quietly.

"He has your face when I throw him in the fire," Vic ground out.

"The perimeter guard." Mac didn't sound ... _surprised_, exactly. Sort of hesitant, like he thought he'd figured something out but he wanted to double-check. "You've been having nightmares about killing the perimeter guard?"

"_Yes_," Vic moaned.

"This whole time?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you _say_ anything?"

"I didn't even want to _think_ about it!"

"Vic..." Mac dropped from his crouch, to sit on the gravel next to Vic. Almost touching, but not quite. Vic could feel the warmth of Mac's bare skin across the centimetre's distance. They were both wearing nothing but underwear. "This whole time, I thought that you thought that it was _okay_ that you'd killed the guard like that."

"What?"

"I couldn't understand it. It wasn't who I thought you were. And ... it made me feel very uncomfortable around you."

"Oh my God." Vic shuddered. "Mac, I can't stop remembering his pleading. I don't even remember pulling the trigger, I just remember the kick of the gun in my hand. The bullet hole in his forehead. We kill people all the time but _not like that_."

Mac touched Vic's shoulder, tentatively. "That's what I've been _saying_."

Vic took a breath to say something else, but it came out as a sob.

And then he was weeping, again, and Mac was holding him. Squeezing him in a rib-crunching hug, tucking his head against Vic's neck and—those choking sounds were also sobs, and were not coming from Vic's throat. Mac was crying too. "I missed you _so much_," he was saying, the words muffled and moist against the skin of Vic's neck.

That went on for a while.

An eighteen-wheeler roaring by a few metres away from them broke the spell. "Oh my God," Vic murmured, sniffling. "We should get away from the highway before somebody calls the cops."

"I brought your shoes," Mac said, holding out a pair of sneakers. Mac had stopped to put on his own running shoes before he'd followed Vic out of the house, Vic saw now.

"Thanks." Vic swiped the back of his hand across his nose, sniffed again, and took the sneakers. Pulled them on, noticing for the first time how much his feet hurt.

They started walking slowly back towards the safe house. Vic felt Mac's fingers brush his hand, and he opened his own hand towards the touch. Mac clasped his hand, squeezed it.

When they got back to the house, Mac brought Vic straight into the bathroom before they took their shoes off. Made him sit on the toilet lid. Carefully took off his right sneaker for him. Looked at the bottom of Vic's foot, blanched, and looked away. "That's gonna need cleaning."

Right, the squeamishness. "It's okay, I can do it," Vic said. "Maybe you could hand me the supplies?"

Vic transferred himself to the rim of the bathtub, and started running warm water to wash the bottoms of his feet. They actually weren't so bad, once he'd cleared away the blood and the dirt. He was definitely going to be limping for a few days, though. "Give me the tweezers?"

Mac had already gotten out the first aid kit. He fished through it and found the requested instrument, and handed it to Vic. Then he sat on the bathroom floor with his back to the bathtub. His head rested against the small of Vic's back. "So you've been having nightmares. That make you puke."

Vic squinted at his foot, focusing on the little bits of gravel that had gotten lodged under his skin. He didn't reply.

"And ... intrusive recurring thoughts? During the day?"

Vic grimaced. Fished out a little rock. "Yeah."

"Mood swings?"

"What?"

"Definitely mood swings. You've been pretty hard to live with, actually. I thought it was because you were mad at me for breaking up with you."

Vic finished with his right foot, started on his left. "I'm not mad at you. I'm sorry if it came across that way."

"Yeah, don't worry about it. I've figured out what's going on. Vic, you have PTSD."

Vic turned sharply to look at Mac. Mac was just sitting with his knees up, first aid kit open at his side, facing the bathroom door. "What?"

"It's kind of obvious, isn't it? I mean, _you're_ the one who read that whole book about it."

"I don't—" Vic started to say, but he stopped himself.

Mac had a point, actually.

"Shit," Vic said instead.

"The good news is," Mac continued, in a incongruously lighthearted tone, "you sat with me through a lot of Reshmi's therapy sessions. So you know what you have to do."

"Pass me the antiseptic cream," Vic said. "_What_ do I have to do?"

"Well, start re-scripting, for one thing," Mac said. "You're having nightmares because you feel helpless, and scared. If you find a way to re-write the event—"

"_No_," Vic interrupted, a little too harshly. "_You_ have nightmares about times that you felt helpless and scared. _I'm_ having nightmares about putting a gun to a man's head and pulling the trigger. That is the _opposite_ of helpless, Mac. I'm having nightmares about being a monster. Pass me the fucking bandages." He started wrapping his feet; it was hard, because his hands were shaking.

"When you shot the guard," Mac said quietly, "did you feel like you had a choice?"

"No!"

"And did you _want_ to shoot the guard?"

"_Fuck_ no, Mac, how can you even ask me that?!"

"So you felt helpless."

"Not as helpless as the man I _shot_." Finished with the bandages, Vic swung his feet around and planted them on the bathroom floor. He braced a hand on Mac's shoulder to help himself stand up, and then started limping away towards his bedroom.

"I'm not going to tell you that it's okay that you did that," Mac said, from just behind him.

"Well ... _great_," Vic bit out. "Glad we cleared _that_ up."

"Do you _want_ me to tell you that it's okay that you executed a helpless prisoner?"

"No!" He limped into the bedroom, threw himself down on the mattress. Put his arm over his eyes. "_Yes_! _Fuck_, Mac, I _didn't_ have a choice!"

Vic felt the mattress dip; Mac had sat down beside him. "Shhh, we don't wanna wake up Taylor," Mac said. And then, "You did have a choice. You could have disobeyed the Director."

"No I couldn't," Vic moaned.

"Why not?"

"Because..." Because Vic was the responsible one. The reliable agent; _years_ more experienced than Mac or Li Ann. "Because the Director has the big picture. She knows what needs to be done."

"She makes mistakes, sometimes," Mac said. "She gets in over her head. Remember Pucci? She told us to execute _him_, too."

_Kill him if you have to. In fact, kill him anyway._ Vic remembered. It hadn't come to that; Pucci had brought his own shooters, and had gone down fighting.

Vic sat up. "If I hadn't shot the guard," he said, slowly, "there might have been an international incident."

"The Director would've had a more complicated cover-up to manage," Mac said. "She would've been pissed off, probably. And maybe more shit would've gone down as a result. Maybe more people would've been killed. Maybe killing the guard was strategically the best move."

Vic hunched his shoulders. "So you're saying it _is_ okay that I did it?"

"_No_. I'm saying that when you work for the Agency, sometimes all of your choices are crappy. But you still have choices."

Vic took a deep breath. "I wish I hadn't done it."

"I'm glad." Mac was hugging his own knees, now. "I mean, I'm sorry that you're so fucked up over this. I'm sorry you have PTSD, because I _know_ how much that sucks. But I'm glad that you said that. Because I've been _miserable_ without you."

Vic thought about what Mac had just said. Its implications. "Are you saying..." He hesitated, a little afraid to put this into words in case he was reading Mac wrong. But fragile hope flared in his chest, and he said it: "...that we can get back together?"

In response, Mac kissed him. On the lips—gently, for all of the first two seconds, and then somehow they were mashing their lips together frantically, teeth bumping, fingers bluntly clawing at each others' backs.

And then they were naked, each others' dicks in their hands, and Vic had a fleeting worried thought back to the nights when everything had gone wrong—but Mac was clearly _into_ it this time, he was pawing at Vic and chattering sexy obscenities under his breath.

Except then suddenly he pushed Vic away and said, "Wait." 

"Sorry," Vic gasped, catching his breath and watching with dismay as Mac went and pulled his underwear back on. "Sorry, I didn't mean to—"

"No, it's fine, it's fine!" Mac interrupted him with a flicker of a smile. "I'll be right back."

And then Mac was gone, and disappearing into the other bedroom.

He came back a moment later, with his hands full. He eased the bedroom door shut after him. "Phew, she didn't wake up," he said, and plopped himself back down on the mattress next to Vic—scattering condoms and a bottle of lube across the surface.

"Um, okay, wow," Vic said, momentarily distracted by the supplies. When had Mac even picked those up? _While_ they were broken up?

"Is this okay?" Mac asked, looking suddenly a little uncertain. "I mean, do _you_ want to...?"

The answer was _yes_, absolutely, definitely, desperately. "Of course," he said. "We don't actually need the condoms, though, do we?" For sure neither of them had been sleeping around, unless Mac had been having a very discreet and incredibly improbable affair with Sonny.

Mac bit his lip. "Would you rather not use them?"

Vic _almost_ said yes to that. Logically, they didn't need them, and sex without the condoms had felt fantastic.

But he remembered, in the nick of time, how easy it was to get Mac to say 'yes' to things that he didn't want to do, sexually. And how thoroughly Vic had fucked things up before, by doing that.

Mac had brought the condoms into the room. That meant that he wanted to use them. "No, let's use them," Vic said. And then, impulsively, "I want you to fuck me." They mostly did it the other way, but it occurred to Vic that maybe it was safer, emotionally speaking, to give Mac as much control over the situation as possible, this time.

And besides—if Mac was fucking _him_, Vic would know that Mac wanted him, _really_ wanted him again, even after everything that had happened.

Mac, meanwhile, was looking delighted. "Okay," he said. "Get on your knees."

Mac didn't fuck him _quickly_. He drew it out, teasing Vic with his mouth, his fingers, his dirty words. By the time Mac finally finished with him, Vic's knees and elbows were shaking, and he could only collapse, moaning, to the mattress.

Mac lay beside him, alternately grinning and nibbling kisses along his cheek, his ear, the side of his neck.

"Did you get off?" Vic finally thought to ask. He hadn't _noticed_ Mac coming, but he hadn't been noticing very much there at the end.

Mac shook his head. "Too busy looking after you."

"Take off the condom," Vic said. And then quickly, at the hesitation in Mac's eyes, "I want to give you a hand job. Only if it's okay, though. Is it okay?"

"Yeah." Mac smiled, all hesitation gone. "That sounds nice."

Vic went up on one elbow, and wrapped his hand around Mac's warm shaft. Mac closed his eyes, and moaned a little.

"I love you," Vic breathed into Mac's ear, starting to move his hand.

Mac groaned in a very encouraging way.

It didn't take long for Mac to come, with Vic whispering in his ear the whole time about how much he loved him. When he did come, gasping, he rolled over towards Vic and just clung to him, hard.

Vic wrapped his arms around him, and kissed his shoulder. "I _love_ you," he said yet again.

"I _missed_ you." Mac sounded as though he was trying not to start crying again. Vic felt his own throat getting tight in reaction.

"Do you want to sleep in here?" Vic asked.

"Yes," Mac said. "But I'd better open the doors so that I'll hear when Taylor wakes up." He peeled himself away from Vic and stood up. He also put his underwear back on, and tossed Vic his own.

"How's she been sleeping, lately?" Vic asked, when Mac came back. Since they'd been separated, Mac had been handling all of the night-time care.

Mac turned off the lights, climbed into the bed and joined Vic under the thin sheet, which was the only cover he'd been using during the warm July nights. "She sleeps through the night about half the time. Sometimes she still wakes up crying for her parents. I think she has nightmares."

"Poor kid," Vic murmured. So that made three of them, then. What a fucked-up household they were. "How about you?"

"I haven't actually been sleeping very much." Mac cuddled in against Vic. "I'm drinking about twenty cups of coffee a day, so...."

"Jesus." Vic frowned. Of course he'd noticed that Mac usually had a cup of coffee in his hands these days, but he hadn't actually thought to add them all up. "Why?"

"It makes it easier to breathe."

"Is that still a problem?" It had been a couple of weeks since the day that Vic had found Mac wheezing on his knees in the backyard next to the punching bag.

"Yeah," Mac said. "But I think it's getting better."

Vic drew back and looked at him. "Twenty cups of coffee a day doesn't sound like it's getting better."

Mac shrugged.

"Lie on your back," Vic said.

Mac gave him a puzzled look, but obeyed.

Vic pressed his ear against Mac's naked chest.

"What are you doing?" Mac asked.

"Shhh," Vic said. "Just breathe, okay?" He listened—holding his own breath.

There was a faint but distinct whistling sound every time Mac's chest rose and fell.

"Shit." Vic sat up, and gave Mac a concerned look. "I don't think it's supposed to sound like that."

"I'm coping," Mac said. "Not like there's anything I can _do_ about it."

"Maybe it would be safe to go to a doctor now," Vic ventured. "It's been a month. What are the chances that anyone's casting a net for month-old smoke inhalation injuries?"

"Depends on what kind of resources they have, and how badly they want Taylor," Mac pointed out. "It's not safe, Vic. I'll see a doctor when the Director pulls us back in. She's _gotta_ come for us soon, right?"

"She said it might be a _year_," Vic reminded him, faintly.

"She must have been kidding about that," Mac said. "I mean ... right? She wouldn't leave us hanging for a _year_."

There was no reply for that. It was a daunting thought, but they had no way to know.

Mac rolled back onto his side, tucked himself in against Vic's chest. "Let's sleep," he said. "Taylor's probably going to wake up in a couple of hours."

"Okay." Vic put his arm over Mac, and closed his eyes.

It was incredibly soothing, the feeling of Mac curled up against him, just where he should be. Vic breathed in his scent, and tried to put the whole terrible month of July out of his mind. He fell asleep quickly, and did not dream.

* * *

The next night, Li Ann came back.


	9. Chapter 9

The morning after their reconciliation, Vic made breakfast while Mac played with Taylor in the living room. It was superficially very similar to every other morning of the past three weeks, but it felt completely different. For starters, Mac chatted with Taylor in _English_.

"So you _were_ speaking Cantonese with her because you were mad at me," Vic observed, mildly, flipping the sizzling sausages over in their pan.

"Well, and _also_ because she's gonna forget it if nobody speaks it with her," Mac said. "I'll still use it with her when you're not around."

They ate breakfast at the dining room table. Taylor, as usual, alternated between kneeling on an adult chair to reach her plate, and crawling into Mac's lap to steal bites off of his.

"I wasn't _mad_ at you," Mac said at one point—apropos nothing (he'd just finished cutting half of a sausage into tiny pieces for Taylor).

"Okay. Um. I don't know what else to call it," Vic said.

Mac looked pensive for a moment, then shrugged and said, "Fair enough." And didn't discuss it further.

After breakfast, Mac went outside for his workout, bringing Taylor with him. Instead of staying inside to watch TV (they got one channel, the CBC, and it was grainy, but Vic had gotten used to it), Vic headed out to watch Mac. He sat in the grass and tossed a ball back and forth with Taylor while Mac warmed up.

"You should work out too," Mac mentioned, as he stretched. "We've been here for a month already. You're gonna turn into a slug."

"I run," Vic said mildly.

"Yeah, like, twice a week." Mac picked up the fabric he'd brought out with him—two ripped halves of a pillowcase—and started wrapping it around his hands. "Hey, maybe I could come with you next time?"

"Do you think you'd be up for it?" Vic asked, thinking of the twenty daily cups of coffee and the wheezing noise in Mac's chest.

"I'm _trying_ to get my endurance back up," Mac said. He finished his wrappings, and took a couple of experimental jabs at the tires. Then he frowned at the loose end of the fabric on his right hand, and started trying to adjust it with his left hand and his teeth.

"Here, let me help," Vic said, standing up. He took Mac's hand, and tucked the loose end in under the wrappings. Then he did the same for Mac's other hand. "There you go." And then they were looking at each other, nose to nose.

"Thanks," Mac grinned, and kissed him.

Vic accepted the quick kiss, his heart skipping with joy. But then he remembered to ask, "What if the neighbours see?"

"None of the windows have sight lines to this part of the yard," Mac said. "They'd have to be outside in their yards—and none of them are right now. Watch it, though—Pat's in her studio, and she usually walks back to the house for tea at about nine thirty."

"How do you _know_ that?" Vic asked.

"I'm out here every morning," Mac pointed out. "Sometimes she invites me and Taylor in for cookies if she sees us."

"Really?" Vic squinted at him. "How did I _not_ know that?"

"I basically haven't been talking to you."

Vic frowned. "We were still talking."

"Yeah but..." Mac jabbed at the tires a couple of times. "Not really."

Vic nodded, thinking about it. "That sucked."

"Uh huh." Mac punched a few more times, and then backed off and did a spinning kick.

Taylor laughed, spun around, and fell down.

"Hey Vic," Mac said, "Kneel on the ground and hold your hands out like this." He demonstrated, fingers splayed and palms out.

"Um, okay," Vic said, and did it.

Mac turned to Taylor and said something in Cantonese.

She laughed delightedly, ran up to Vic, balled her little hands up into fists, and punched his palms.

Mac grinned. "Good job, Taytay!"

"Anyway, we can't both go running at the same time," Vic said, picking up the earlier thread of conversation. "We can't leave Taylor alone." Meanwhile, he moved his hands a foot to the right. Taylor frowned in concentration. Then she ran in a full circle, stopped in front of his newly-positioned hands, raised her arms over her head, and slammed her fists down on his palms. Vic gave her an approving smile.

"Maybe we could get one of those jogging strollers." Mac punched the tires some more.

"Yeah, maybe." Vic thought about it for a moment. "I mean, sure, why not? Wanna head into Sudbury, see if we can find one?"

"_Now_?"

"Carpe diem." Maybe the Director would come for them tomorrow, and it would have been a wasted trip. Maybe they'd be stuck here for another six months. Who the hell knew? The important thing was, they were together again. For the first time since Canada Day, Vic felt _happy_.

* * *

They bought a jogging stroller. Also a small backyard slide for Taylor, a blender for the kitchen, and a set of bookshelves (some assembly required). They made it home in time for Taylor's afternoon nap.

Once Taylor was sacked out on her bed, they lay down together in the other room.

"Wanna have sex?" Vic asked. Not that he was feeling particularly horny, but they were in bed, and they probably had an hour before Taylor woke up.

But Mac shook his head. "Too tired."

"Wanna nap?" Vic could go for a nap, actually. The night hadn't exactly been restful. _None_ of the nights, recently, had been particularly restful.

Mac shook his head again. "Too wired."

"I've been counting," Vic mentioned. "You've had sixteen cups of coffee since you woke up this morning."

"Sounds about right," Mac shrugged.

"Maybe you should try cutting back." Vic ran his fingertips along the side of Mac's face, tracing his jaw. Looked at him carefully; his eyes had faint dark crescents underneath them, and his overall complexion was a little sallow. "You said you haven't been sleeping much at night. Maybe if you cut out the coffee mid-afternoon onward, you'll be able to sleep when bedtime hits."

"I guess I can try that." Mac gave him a little flicker of a smile. "I missed you fussing over me like this."

Vic wrinkled his nose. "I'm not fussing."

"You _are_. It's okay, it's sweet. It makes me feel loved."

"I was trying to give you space," Vic said quietly. "But I never stopped loving you."

Mac edged a little closer to Vic, laid his hand along the side of Vic's face. Gazed carefully into his eyes. "I did stop loving you. I'm sorry."

Well, that was hard to hear. Vic squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. Opened them, and Mac was still there. "And now?"

"I missed you," Mac said. "_So_ much."

Which was reassuring, but it wasn't 'I love you'. "I missed you too," Vic replied, instead of drawing more attention to the words Mac hadn't said. "Sometimes I felt almost crazy with it. I mean, here we were, sharing a house in the middle of nowhere, raising a _kid_ together—but I felt like you were a stranger. I actually thought of you as Macdonald Xian, sometimes, like that's who I was living with instead of you."

Mac gave a slight nod. "I did that on purpose. I had to be somebody else so that I could survive without you."

Vic furrowed his brow. "Uh, you can't just _be_ somebody else."

"Maybe _you_ can't. I do it all the time."

"Hm." Vic touched Mac's lips. "But I've got Mac Ramsey back now?"

"Yeah," Mac said. But his eyes were guarded.

"We're not..." Vic swallowed. "We're not completely okay yet. Are we." It was a scary thing to say.

Mac took a breath. Let it out in a little sigh. "You still did the things that you did."

The bullet hole in the guard's forehead. Vic hadn't even thought about it today. His confessions to Mac last night had given him a kind of release. But now he felt a bit of the weight coming back. "What can I do?" he asked. "To fix things?"

"I don't know," Mac said softly. "Maybe some things can't be fixed."

"Are you ... um ... are we actually back together?" Vic asked. His heart was thudding loudly in his ears, all of a sudden. "I mean, last night, today, it _felt_ like we were..."

"I want us to be," Mac said.

"I want it too," Vic said quickly. "So ... we _are_. Right?"

"Um, sure," Mac said.

Vic considered just taking Mac's words at face value and letting this go. He could see the danger in continuing to push—their reconciliation was new and fragile, and if he examined it too hard, maybe he would break it again.

But Vic didn't want to be walking on eggshells forever. "Please, Mac. You have to tell me what's wrong. Maybe I can't go back in time and _change_ anything, but we can go forward, right? I want to make things better."

Mac was quiet for long enough that Vic started to think that he wouldn't answer. But then he said, "When Michael came back, he said he'd changed."

"Uh huh." Vic watched Mac carefully, wary of where this was going.

"He wanted me to trust him again, to believe in him. In the showdown with Chow, he drew fire for me. He let himself be vulnerable, and he saved my life. I still didn't trust him. So then he stood up in the briefing room and let me beat the _crap_ out of him, without fighting back, to try to convince me that he'd changed."

"I was there," Vic murmured.

"And I _still_ didn't trust him. And then he helped us bring down Pucci, save the Director—he saved _me_, do you remember? That last shooter came up behind me, I didn't see him. Michael got him before he got me. And the way Michael looked at me then ... the way he _smiled_ at me ... I thought he was happy to see that I was okay. That I was safe. I believed, finally, that he still cared about me. That I'd been an asshole to refuse to accept that he could become something better. That ... maybe we could be together again, like we used to be. I _saw_ it, this whole future with him and me in it."

"And then he knocked you out and left you to die, because he'd only been waiting for you to trust him so that he could betray you." Vic cleared his throat. "Yeah, okay. I can definitely understand if you have some trust issues. But I'm not Michael. I would never hurt you."

Mac just kind of flinched. Barely noticeably.

"I _wouldn't_," Vic insisted.

"You ... sort of _did_," Mac said, quietly. And hunched in on himself. "I know it was my fault. But I had some ... bad dreams about it, afterwards."

Vic blinked, confused. "What are you talking about, Mac?"

"Never mind." Mac curled up tighter. "Actually, let's nap."

"Ah, no. No, you need to tell me what you're talking about."

"Forget I said anything. I don't want to talk about it."

Vic looked at Mac, biting his lip. Mac had curled up into a ball and squeezed his eyes shut.

Vic sat up, tucking his own knees up to his chest. "Whatever it is that I did," he said, "I'm sorry. But if you don't tell me what it was, I can't do very much about it."

"I _did_ tell you," Mac said. "It doesn't matter."

Well, it obviously _did_ matter. Vic felt a little spike of irritation, but he fought it down. Mac was upset about something; he wasn't _trying_ to be difficult. (When he was trying to be difficult, he was a lot funnier.) "_When_ did you tell me?"

"Before we broke up."

Three weeks ago. Great. Vic pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to think. Mac had broken up with him because of the dead perimeter guard. ... No, get this right: Mac had broken up with him because Vic, in trying to suppress his horror and guilt at what he'd done, had given Mac the impression that he was _fine_ with having executed the perimeter guard.

And when Mac had discovered that Vic was not fine, he had taken him back.

The killing was a terrible thing that Vic had done, but it wasn't something that he'd done to _Mac_. What had he done to Mac?

Oh, shit. "Are you talking about the sex?"

"I said I don't want to talk about it." Mac curled even tighter, and put his arms over his head.

"I think we have to." Vic shut his own eyes for a moment, and pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. _Fuck._ He'd had no idea that Mac was still upset about that. "I'm sorry. I screwed up. I was a mess, and I was just so desperate to reconnect with you...." _I'm sorry I wouldn't take no for an answer when you said that you didn't want to have sex with me, but I was feeling really upset at the time about having recently killed a man in cold blood._ Oh God. Was that the excuse he was making? Maybe Mac _shouldn't_ take him back, fuck. "Wait, what was that you said a minute ago about bad dreams?"

Mac moaned a little. "I had some dreams where I didn't want to have sex and you forced me to. They messed with my head. I'm sorry, I know that didn't really happen. Things were just ... really dark with you, at that point. And Li Ann left, and I didn't know what to do."

"Oh, Jesus." Vic covered his face with his hands. Breathed. "Mac. I am so sorry. I didn't think, and I should have, and ... I won't do it again. I promise. I will never pressure you to have sex when you don't want to, ever again."

"It wasn't your fault," Mac said. Still curled up. "I always want sex. How were you supposed to know that that time I didn't? I only didn't because I was freaked out about you killing the guard, and we didn't have condoms."

Vic swallowed. He felt a little sick. He forced himself to look at Mac. "Mac, you used the actual words 'I don't want to have sex.' You were clear. I ignored you. I really, really fucked up." He thought a bit more about what Mac had said. "And I'm sorry I pressured you to have sex without condoms, too. I didn't realize that would bother you so much. I mean, you _know_ we're safe—we spend literally every night together, there's no possible way either of us could be sleeping around."

"Michael never used condoms with me."

Oh. _Oh._ "_That_ was dangerous," Vic acknowledged.

"Compared to everything else with Michael? Well, he never gave me AIDS, so I guess it turned out all right in the end. He did give me the clap a couple of times, but there's pills for that."

"I won't ask you to have sex without condoms anymore," Vic promised. "I shouldn't have in the first place. I'm sorry."

"Okay," Mac said. He hadn't uncurled yet.

"Last night..." Vic hugged his knees, "was last night okay? Did the sex make you uncomfortable at all?"

"_No_," Mac said quickly. "I wanted it. I'd missed you so much." Finally, he uncurled a little, and made eye contact with Vic with a little sheepish grin. "Thanks for letting me top, though. I think that did help."

Vic squinted at Mac a little, thinking that one through. "I didn't _let_ you top," he felt it was important to clarify. "I _suggested_ it. I'm not in charge. You don't think of us that way, do you?"

"Well..." Mac drew out the word, looking a little embarrassed, "maybe. Kinda."

Vic contemplated that, for a moment. Well, he couldn't say he was _shocked_.

And that, come to think of it, might also have had something to do with how they'd messed up the way they had. Mac giving up after a token protest and acquiescing to sex that he didn't want, and ending up feeling violated. Shit. "I think we might have to work on that," Vic said.

"Okay," Mac said. Submissively.

Vic looked at him carefully—but there was no trace of irony or humour in Mac's expression.

Long-term project, then. And Vic would be a lot more careful, in the meantime. He didn't want to hurt Mac ever again.

"Do you think we could cuddle?" Mac asked. "I don't think I can sleep, but I'd really like to cuddle."

"Of course," Vic said. "Come here." He lay down again, and opened his arms so that Mac could tuck himself into his embrace. Mac curled up against Vic's chest, and sighed, and closed his eyes. Vic felt him relaxing.

"I do love you," Mac murmured against Vic's chest. "I do trust you. You're nothing like Michael."

Less than a minute later, Mac was asleep.

* * *

About an hour after supper, that night, the doorbell rang.

Vic was in the kitchen, washing dishes. Mac was sitting on the couch with Taylor, reading her _Goodnight Moon_.

This was precisely the second time that they'd heard the doorbell at the safe house. The first time had been Pat, the day they'd moved in, bringing them greetings and a loaf of bread.

Mac was on his feet instantly, scooping Taylor up. "You get the door," he said to Vic, already on the move towards the back of the house.

"Uh huh," Vic said, shaking his hands off and drying them on his jeans. He thought about the guns in the high kitchen cupboards; decided not to take one, because really it was probably just Pat again, and the outfit he was wearing had nowhere to hide a gun on short notice. He did see that Mac grabbed one on his way to hide in a bedroom with Taylor. "Coming!" Vic called to the door—wishing it had a peephole.

He opened the door cautiously, just a crack at first.

And then threw it open wide.

"Li Ann!!!"

She grinned at him, a little sheepishly, standing there on the doorstep with an overnight bag slung over her shoulder. "Hi," she said.

She had a new haircut, short and spiky. Tidy, minimal make-up. A well-fitted white button-down shirt. She was wearing a short burgandy skirt and tall black boots, and she had a light athletic brace on her right knee.

Then Mac was bumping past Vic and wrapping her in a hug. "Li _Ann_," he gasped.

She hugged him back, squeezing hard. "Hi," she said again.

Vic picked up Taylor, who was trying to make a break for it through the open door. "Hey look, Mommy's back," he said to her mildly.

Taylor wrinkled her nose, and gave Li Ann a sort of suspicious look.

"So, where have you been?" Vic asked, when Mac finally released Li Ann and took a step back—swiping the heel of his hand across his eyes, Vic noticed, and sniffling.

"New York," she replied. "I guess I owe you an explanation."

"No," Mac said quickly. "It doesn't matter. We're just happy to have you back."

"But an explanation would be great," Vic added with a tight smile. "Why don't you come in."

Li Ann glanced around as she entered. "It looks a lot homier now."

"Well, you know," Vic said. "Furniture."

The dining room table and the couch were still the only places to sit; Li Ann headed for the table. "You both look good," she mentioned. "Very tan."

"We spend a lot of time outdoors," Vic said. He glanced at Mac; Mac was settling into the chair opposite the one Li Ann had chosen, and he looked like he was barely managing not to start crying again. "Hey, would you guys like some tea?" he asked, thinking of their reflexive response to every emotional crisis.

"Yes, that would be nice," Li Ann smiled at him. "Thanks."

Vic left Taylor to play on the living room floor, and went to start the kettle boiling.

"So, New York?" Mac said. His voice was a bit thick.

"Hm, yeah," Li Ann said. "It seemed like a good place to disappear into."

"Did you check out the museums?" Vic asked. "Visit Broadway, take in a show or two?"

"Well, yes, actually," Li Ann said. "Cabaret was pretty good."

Vic looked over the tea in the cupboard. Decided that the lemon balm sounded nice and soothing. "You left very ... suddenly," he said.

"I'm sorry." Li Ann fidgeted a bit nervously with the strap of her overnight bag, which she hadn't even set down yet. "Something came up."

"Something that you couldn't tell _us_ about?" Vic was trying not to yell. He was really trying. But Li Ann had _abandoned_ them, and they'd nearly fallen apart, and she'd been watching _musicals_ in _New York_?

"Something I didn't know _how_ to tell you about." Li Ann took a deep breath. "I think that Taylor is my daughter."

Vic put the teapot down and stared at her. "What?"

"I had a baby girl. I gave her to the Director as soon as she was born. When you told us, at the pizza place, that Geneviève and Huang couldn't be Taylor's parents, I realized ... it was _her_." Li Ann was sitting very straight; she looked nervous.

And Mac looked like he'd seen a ghost. "But..." he said, "that's not possible. We never— we always—"

She turned to him. "The night before we ran. We weren't careful."

"We thought we were going to die," he choked out in a half-strangled whisper.

"I'm so sorry I never told you." Li Ann's fingers went back to fidgeting with the strap of her bag, but her gaze stayed steady on Mac. "I thought you were dead. And then when you came back—there would've been no point. She was gone."

Because of course. If Li Ann was Taylor's mother, then Mac was her father.

_She looks just like you,_ said absolutely everybody. Everybody who saw Taylor and Mac together. And she did. She looked just like him, with bits of Li Ann mixed in. How had Vic not clued in? He was supposed to be a detective.

He hadn't looked past the fact that _of course_ Taylor looked like she could be their daughter. She was half Chinese and half white. And he'd thought Geneviève was her mother, and he hadn't _known_ that Li Ann had ever had a baby....

Mac was obviously processing this too. He was looking absolutely panicky. "Taylor ... is ... _our_ ... daughter?"

"Yes," Li Ann said. "I think so. Mac, are you okay?"

He nodded, but started coughing.

"Uh oh," Vic muttered, and went for the fridge. The thermos of coffee—had they remembered to make one this morning? No. _Fuck._ Mac was sitting up straight now, eyes wide, and wheezing.

Li Ann, meanwhile, had stood up and gone around the table to Mac's side. She was fishing in her bag for something. She pulled out a small blue object—an inhaler? She shook it. "Mac," she said, "this will help. Exhale first, okay?" She held the inhaler up to his mouth. "Close your lips on it. Now you need to inhale, ready?" Vic saw her depress the canister at the top of the inhaler. "Now hold it, hold your breath, I'm going to count, one...two...three..." Mac started coughing again on three; Li Ann took the inhaler away. "Good job," she said. "Can you feel it working?"

He shook his head, and wheezed.

"You should feel it pretty soon, but we're going to do that again in sixty seconds. Okay? Keep breathing. Try to slow it down."

Vic, by then, had come around to stand on the opposite side of Mac from where Li Ann was. Mac leaned his head back against Vic's chest, and took his hand.

"Where'd you get the inhaler?" Vic asked.

"I went to a doctor in New York. I paid in cash, gave a different fake name—don't worry, there's no way anybody could trace me back here."

"Oh my God," Mac murmured, a little breathily, "that works _so_ much better than the coffee."

Vic felt like _he_ could breathe easier, all of a sudden. "You're okay?" He shuddered, and kissed Mac's head.

Mac nodded. "Getting there."

Li Ann looked at her watch. "Second dose. Mac, do you think you can do it yourself?"

He nodded, and took the inhaler. Sucked in a dose, and managed to hold it about twice as long as the first time.

Li Ann was watching him with concern. "Has this been happening to him a lot?" she asked Vic.

"Um, three other times," Vic said.

Mac shook his head and held up five fingers.

"Oh my God, Mac, it happened when I wasn't around?" Vic felt a belated and useless surge of adrenaline. "What did you do?"

"Waited it out. Tried not to panic," Mac said, a bit hoarsely. "Taytay helped."

"Helped _how_?"

"Patted my head." He grinned weakly. "Stopped me from panicking." Then he went pale again. "Oh my God. She's my _daughter_."

Vic squeezed his hand. "Yeah. Uh, don't start hyperventilating again, okay?"

Li Ann bit her lip. "Taylor ... how's she doing?"

"Well, she's right _there_," Vic said, nodding his head towards the living room area. Taylor had been playing on the floor this whole time, babbling to Gaga the doll. "Why don't you go see her?"

"Let's all go," Mac said. He still sounded a little wheezy, but nowhere near as bad as a minute ago. The inhaler was _definitely_ an improvement on the coffee. "I'd rather be sitting on the couch."

So Vic helped Mac walk across the room to the couch, and settled him onto it. Li Ann followed them, with an expression like she was heading into a tiger's den.

Taylor looked up when Mac sat down on the couch. "Daddy!" she chirped. "Gaga eat papasaw!"

"She's giving the doll applesauce," Vic translated for Li Ann's benefit. Taylor was kneeling on the floor with the doll, poking it in the mouth with a spoon they'd given her to play with.

"That's nice," Mac said, giving Taylor a very feeble smile.

Taylor stood up, grabbed the doll by the hair, and trotted over to the couch. "Daddy give Gaga papasaw!"

Mac recoiled slightly. "Um, not now, Taytay," he said, and didn't reach for the doll.

Taylor looked dismayed at the unexpected refusal. Vic jumped in. "Hey Taytay, give Gaga to me. I'll give her some applesauce. Daddy's a bit sick right now."

"Daddy cough? Kah! Kah!" Taylor fake-coughed and grinned. "Daddy hugs and feew bettah!" Dropping Gaga on the floor, Taylor climbed up onto the couch and wrapped her arms around Mac's neck, pressing her cheek against his.

Mac froze. He looked _terrified_.

Li Ann, who had sat down beside him, gazed at Taylor with a fixed, deliberate smile, and did not reach out to help.

"Hey, um, come here Taytay," Vic said, gently peeling her away from Mac. "Hugs are nice but Daddy needs a little space to breathe." He stood, hefting Taylor up along with him. "Actually, little girl, it's pretty much your bedtime. How about we get you some warm milk while Mommy and Daddy take a moment to stop freaking out?"

Balancing Taylor on his hip, he headed into the kitchen. He kept an eye on Li Ann and Mac, though. Li Ann curled her legs up on the couch and leaned against Mac, and he put an arm around her. She offered him the inhaler, and he took another dose. They didn't say anything, at least not that Vic could hear.

Meanwhile, Vic warmed up some milk and finished making the forgotten tea. He put the milk in a sippy cup and handed it to Taylor, and put her down on the floor. "Drink your milk, and then we'll put you to bed," he told her. Then he poured two mugs of tea, and carried them out to the couch. "Here," he said to Li Ann and Mac.

They accepted the tea. Both of them looked pretty tense.

"What the _hell_," Mac said, cupping his hands around the mug, "is the Director playing at? Making us the pretend parents of our _actual_ child?"

"Well, it's a solid cover," Vic pointed out. "Nobody ever doubted she was yours."

Li Ann and Mac both gave him looks that made him wince.

"Sorry." Vic rubbed his temple. "This is ... this is a lot to take in, actually. Maybe could we back up a bit?" He sat down on the couch on Mac's left. "Li Ann ... you had a _baby_?"

She sipped at her tea. "I didn't realize that I was pregnant until I was four months along. I thought it was the grief that was making me nauseous. I thought my period had stopped because I wasn't eating." She shivered. Mac put his free hand on her knee. "I knew it was yours," she said to him. "I never actually had sex with Michael."

"Oh? I wasn't sure about that," Mac mentioned.

She nodded. "He came on to me a couple of times, near the end, but I refused him."

"So he decided to make you marry him," Mac said.

She nodded. "Well, we all know how that turned out."

"So there you were in prison, four months pregnant with Mac's child," Vic said, to get them back on track and off the subject of Michael.

"Well, when the doctor told me I was pregnant, I told her who the father was," Li Ann said. "And that he was dead. I requested an abortion. My request was denied. I was sent back to my cell."

"Li Ann," Mac whispered, "I'm so sorry you had to go through that alone." He handed Vic his mug of tea, and then wrapped his arms around her in a hug. She rested her head against his shoulder, and sniffled a little.

"About a month later the Director came to my cell," she went on. "She told me that if I would come and work for her, she would find a home for the baby. A good home, with two parents who would love it."

"Geneviève and Huang," Mac said softly. "Do you think she already had them in mind?"

Vic suddenly felt a chill run all through him. He sat up straight. "Oh my God," he said. "The Director traded your baby to Geneviève and Huang for military secrets."

Mac and Li Ann both gave him puzzled looks.

"Think about it," Vic said. "What did the Director tell us the first day? Geneviève and Huang work for the Americans. But they have a 'special relationship' with the Agency. I bet the Americans don't even _know_ about that special relationship. No wonder the Director was so desperate to keep the whole thing dark."

Just then Taylor wandered up to the couch and declared "Aww done!," displaying her empty sippy cup as evidence.

Vic took in Li Ann's and Mac's haunted expressions. "I'll put Taylor to bed," he said. "You two drink your tea. We can continue this conversation when Taylor's asleep."

* * *

Vic gave Taylor a bath. Brushed her teeth, and her hair. Settled her on the mattress in the room that had been hers and Mac's for the past three weeks, rubbed her back until her eyes drifted shut.

Thinking, all the while: this was Mac and Li Ann's _daughter_.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. (Yep, that's some thematically-appropriate swearing there, Vic).

When he got back to the living room, Li Ann and Mac were huddled close together, talking softly.

"Hey," Vic said, joining them on the couch. "How's it going?"

"Mac's been telling me about Taylor," Li Ann said. Her eyes were a bit puffy.

"Yeah, she's a pretty sweet kid," Vic said. "So ... now what?"

They both looked at him blankly.

"Okay, for starters—Li Ann, are you going to stick around this time?"

Li Ann gave a bit of a guilty wince, but Mac squeezed her hand and glared at Vic. "Lay _off_ her, Vic. She had a shock, she freaked out—but she came back."

Vic eyed Li Ann. "She ran out of money."

Li Ann acknowledged that with a little nod.

Mac's eyes widened, a bit. "You took three thousand dollars."

She shrugged. "New York is expensive. Medical care is expensive."

"But you would have come back anyway. Right?" Mac sounded a little desperate.

"Shhh," Li Ann soothed, kissing his cheek. "I would have. I'm sorry."

"Anyway, going to a doctor outside of the country—that was smart," he said.

"Hm, yeah," Vic agreed, deciding to drop the question of Li Ann's commitment to their team, for the moment. "How _are_ you doing, Li Ann?"

"Well, the knee's a lot better," she said, shifting her position so that she could straighten and bend her right leg, in demonstration. "I probably only need to wear the brace for another two weeks or so. As for the lungs—" she grimaced. "It's wait and see. Maybe the damage will heal, given enough time."

"Maybe?" Mac repeated, a little faintly.

"Well, I didn't have enough money for really _detailed_ medical treatment. The doctor said that the asthma-like symptoms might go away eventually on their own. The inhalers just help to keep me breathing in the meantime." She gave Mac a concerned look. "How have _you_ been coping?"

"I've been drinking a _lot_ of coffee," Mac said.

Li Ann frowned. "Coffee?"

"Sonny—remember him, our neighbour the biker? He told us that caffeine can help keep the airways open," Vic said.

"It definitely helped," Mac said. "I almost never had attacks when I was drinking a lot of coffee. I _didn't_ have any coffee this afternoon, remember?"

"Oh, shit." Vic winced. "I thought you needed to cut down on the caffeine so you could get some _sleep_. I'm sorry."

Mac shrugged. "It was worth a try. The insomnia's been brutal."

"Do you want me to make some coffee now?" Vic asked. "How are you feeling?"

Mac took an experimental breath. "_Amazing_, actually. The band across my chest is just ... _gone_."

"Oh, sweetie," Li Ann said, looking worried. "Have you had that feeling this whole time?"

"Well, since the fire, yeah." Mac frowned. "Haven't you?"

"No. I mean, once in a while, yes, but it's a warning sign that I need to use the rescue inhaler right away." She looked thoughtful. "Hang on." She got up and went over to the dining room table, where she'd left her bag. When she came back, she had a different inhaler—a brown one. "Here. You should probably use this. This one's maintenance—one dose every twelve hours."

Mac took it from her, eyed it warily for a moment, and then gave himself a dose. He handed it back to her, wrinkling his nose. "It tastes weird."

"I usually rinse my mouth out, after," Li Ann said. She looked at her watch, shrugged, and gave herself a dose too.

"There's still more tea," Vic offered.

"Actually," Mac said, "I think I'd like to go to bed."

"Tired?" Vic asked him, touching his face.

Mac nodded. He looked pretty haggard. "Would you mind if I slept in your bed? And you looked after Taylor tonight?"

"Yeah, I can do that," Vic said. "Do you want me to help you to the bed?"

"No, I'm okay," Mac said, standing up. "Actually, now that I can _breathe_ I really just want to lie down and sleep."

So Mac headed off on his own. And Li Ann gave Vic a puzzled look. "What did he mean by '_your_ bed'?"

"Oh." Vic grimaced, rubbed the back of his neck. "We've been sleeping separately pretty much since you left."

"Because of Taylor?"

"No. Actually we broke up." He picked up the empty tea mugs from the living room floor and carried them to the kitchen.

"You _what_?" Li Ann said, trailing after him.

"Well, Mac broke up with me." He'd been half-way through washing the dishes when Li Ann had rung the doorbell. The water had gone lukewarm, but it would still do for finishing. He added the mugs to the basin, and picked up the dishcloth.

"But ... why?" Li Ann sounded half-stunned.

"Because I killed that guard." Vic hunched his shoulders, turning the dishcloth inside a glass.

"What guard?"

Vic stared at her. She gave him a blank look and a little shrug.

"The _perimeter_ guard," Vic said. "The one he _didn't_ kill?"

"Oh, right," Li Ann said. "I remember now. He was upset about that." She shook her head. "He _broke up_ with you? That seems like a bit of an overreaction."

"Well..." Vic swallowed. "I did murder a man in cold blood."

Li Ann frowned. "No, you followed the Director's orders and completed the mission. We're _agents_."

Vic let out a sharp, unfunny laugh. "Could _you_ have done it?"

"Yes," she said immediately. "I was going to, remember? But my knee gave out."

"Well, don't tell Mac that." He shook his head. That had come out a little more bitter than he'd meant it to. "Anyway, maybe he wouldn't have broken up with _you_ over it. He's sure ready to forgive you for fucking off to New York."

Li Ann raised an eyebrow. "You're angry at me."

"No!" Somehow, the glass he was washing slipped sideways out of his hand and crashed to the floor, shattering. "Oh _shit_." He looked at Li Ann. She was barefoot. Vic at least was wearing gym socks over the bandages from last night. "Don't move."

"_You_ don't move," she said. "You're in the middle of it. I'm at the edge. Is there a broom somewhere? A dust pan?"

"Yeah, uh, across the hall in the closet with the washer and dryer."

Li Ann eased away carefully, watching her feet. She came back and started sweeping up glass. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, keeping her gaze on the shards. "When I left, I thought you two would be okay, because you had each other."

"Well, we weren't. We didn't."

"This evening, you didn't _seem_ broken up," she observed. "You were touching a lot."

"We got back together last night."

She looked up at him and squinched her nose in an irritated way. "Seriously, Vic? You couldn't have mentioned _that_ at the same time you told me about the breakup?"

He shrugged.

She returned to sweeping up glass. "So you're okay _now_."

"I ... uh, I don't really know if we are," Vic confessed. Standing straight, not moving. He could still see the glitter of glass around his feet. Li Ann was carefully making her way across the floor on her hands and knees, sweeping up all the little bits. "It wasn't just the guard."

He didn't have to tell her this. Mac probably wouldn't.

She'd run away to New York and left them falling to pieces.

(She'd come back, and now Mac could _breathe_.)

(If Vic didn't tell her, it would be because he wanted to hide his guilt and shame. That's what he'd done with his feelings about killing the guard, and that had nearly torn _everything_ apart.)

"Hm?" she said, looking up.

"A couple of times," Vic said, squeezing his fingernails into his palms, "I pressured him to have sex when he really didn't want to. At the time, I felt like it was the way to _fix_ our relationship. He was mad at me for killing the guard, and I was mad at _him_ for refusing to let it go. Except really, I was horrified with _myself_, but I couldn't admit it, not even to myself. I thought that if we had sex, everything would be okay again. But it really, really wasn't." Vic shuddered. "He started to have nightmares about me raping him."

Li Ann's eyes widened in shock. She stood up. "Vic..." she said, in a low, slightly dangerous tone, "what did you _do_?"

"I didn't force him!" Vic assured her quickly, desperately. "I would _never_ do something like that, _ever_. But ... I _manipulated_ him. I did it on purpose. I knew what I was doing. He said no, but I thought it was okay to ignore that, because he _eventually_ said yes."

Li Ann looked disturbed, but also a bit confused. "So what you're saying is that you talked him into having sex with you when he would've rather not? I mean, that's not great, I guess, but it's not _terrible_."

"Maybe with somebody else it wouldn't have been terrible," Vic conceded. "But think about his history with Michael. Li Ann, I don't think he really felt like he had the _right_ to say no to me."

"But he broke up with you."

"After that. Yeah."

She raked her hand through her hair—a leftover gesture from when her hair was longer. "So he _did_ say no."

"Um..." Vic hunched his shoulders. "Well. Yeah. I guess so."

"And when he broke up with you," Li Ann said, "how did you react? Did you hound him to take you back?"

"No," Vic assured her quickly. "I gave him space. I mean, we still had to live together, look after Taylor together—but he kept himself distant. And I didn't try to break through that."

"And when you got back together," she said, "last night?"

He nodded.

"Did you ask him to take you back? Did you talk him into it?"

"No." Vic cleared his throat, hugged himself. "He came to me."

Li Ann took a slow, contemplative breath, looking at him. "It sounds to me like you had a rough patch," she said, finally. "And you got through it."

Vic hugged himself harder. His eyes had gone all blurry, somehow.

"Vic, you can walk now," Li Ann said gently. "I've cleaned up all the glass."


	10. Chapter 10

August 1st dawned bright and warm.

Taylor woke Vic up a little after sunrise, having slept straight through the night. He was glad to have been spared a middle-of-the-night waking, since she probably wouldn't have been happy to find out that Vic was looking after her instead of Mac. She wasn't _especially_ enthusiastic to discover that Vic was in charge of her wake-up routine, either, but he quickly appeased her with a sippy cup of milk, a bowl of applesauce, and _The Little Mermaid_ popped into the VCR.

The door to the other bedroom was open, so Vic could see that Mac and Li Ann were sleeping all tangled up together. He eased the door closed, so that Taylor's noises wouldn't disturb them.

Around seven-thirty, Li Ann wandered out, yawning. She'd been sleeping topless, but she'd pulled on an olive-green tank top before leaving the room. She was also wearing underwear, and the knee brace. "G'morning," she said.

"Good morning," Vic returned. "Is Mac up?"

She stretched, and shook her head. "He sort of rolled over and mumbled, though." She made her way to the pot of coffee that Vic had left warming, and poured herself a cup. She squinted at the clock over the stove. "Didn't he go to bed at, like, nine o'clock last night?"

"We might as well let him sleep for as long as he wants," Vic said. "Not like we have any pressing appointments, today. How'd you sleep?"

"Great." She sipped her coffee. "Mac, too. No nightmares."

"A good night all around, then," Vic murmured, and went to open the fridge.

He hadn't dreamed about killing the guard. Huh.

Had the act of confessing his PTSD to Mac actually cured it? That didn't seem fair, somehow. But if the absent nightmare was a gift horse, he wouldn't look it in the mouth. "How do you feel about eggs and bacon?" he said.

Li Ann smiled. "I would very happily devour a lot of them."

* * *

Mac showed up half-way through the cooking of the bacon. He'd put on a pair of the boxing shorts that he wore for his morning workouts. "Hey," he said to Vic, and went over for a kiss.

Vic happily accepted the kiss but then shooed Mac over to the other side of the kitchen. "You don't want grease splatters on your bare chest," he pointed out. Vic himself was wearing a t-shirt and an apron. "Have some coffee."

"I don't need coffee anymore," Mac said. "Li Ann brought _medicine_."

"Speaking of which," Li Ann said, "Mac, you should go take a dose from the brown inhaler. It's in the side pocket of my overnight bag."

"And then take your antidepressant," Vic reminded him. "And then come back here and _have_ a cup of coffee. You've been drinking twenty fucking cups a day. If you stop cold turkey the withdrawal's going to be brutal."

_Twenty cups?_ Li Ann mouthed at Vic, wide-eyed, as Mac shrugged and headed back to the bedrooms.

"It was the only way he had to stave off the attacks," Vic said quietly. "I think he had a really rough month. We were broken up, so he didn't exactly _talk_ to me about it."

"He must have gone to a doctor, though," Li Ann observed. "If he's got the antidepressants?"

"Hah," Vic said. "That was a thing. I did drag him to a clinic. He'd gone into hard-core withdrawal from the Zoloft. Fever, shakes, depression—he was a mess. I _thought_ he could just tell the doctor that he needed a new prescription."

"And ... what happened?"

Vic rolled his eyes. "He stole a blank page from the prescription pad and wrote _himself_ a new script." The results from Mac's blood test had arrived by mail, a week and a half later. HIV-negative, of course. Mac had left the paper lying open on the breakfast bar; Vic still wasn't sure whether he'd meant it passive-aggressively, or whether he'd just been being sloppy. Anyway, it didn't matter. Vic had apologized. They were over it.

Li Ann, rather than looking properly appalled, just smirked. "Yeah, that sounds like Mac."

* * *

They ate their eggs and bacon at the dining room table. Taylor joined them, drawn by the smell of the food.

Vic served her small portions on her own plastic plate, and she kneeled on her chair and ate some of it. Then she giggled and went to climb onto Mac's lap to steal some of his, which was her usual routine.

Mac shook his head. "No, Taylor, stay on your own chair." He picked her up gently by the waist and moved her back over.

Vic stared across the table at them. "Mac? What are you doing?"

"She has her own plate," Mac said. "She should eat from it."

Taylor frowned, but she didn't seem grievously offended. She finger-fed herself a bit more of the bacon from her own plate, and then climbed down off the chair and trotted back to the living room area.

"Uh, greasy fingers," Vic pointed out. There was a damp washcloth on the table; usually Mac cleaned Taylor's fingers before she escaped.

"Could you do it?" Mac said. "I'm eating."

Well, Vic was eating too. But he decided not to make an issue of it. He took the cloth and went over and wiped Taylor's fingers clean before she could get her greasy fingerprints all over Gaga.

When they finished eating, Mac asked Vic, "Could you keep Taylor in here while I work out this morning?"

"Um, I guess so," Vic said. "But why?" He was starting to have his suspicions, actually. But he wanted to hear it from Mac.

"I'd like to do a really hard workout," Mac said. (Which was not what Vic had been thinking.) "I haven't been able to do one since we got here."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Vic asked, cautiously. "I mean, whatever's in the inhalers, it's _Li Ann_'s prescription. You haven't seen a doctor. I'm glad you're feeling better, but maybe you shouldn't push it."

"Li Ann and I breathed the same smoke," Mac said. "Whatever works for her is gonna work for me. And I _need_ to push it."

"You should use the blue inhaler before you start," Li Ann said, mildly. "If you do that, you'll probably be okay."

In the three and a half weeks that Li Ann had been gone, Vic had missed an awful lot of things about having her around. But he had _not_ missed the experience of being out-voted two-to-one.

Still, he had six months of experience of dealing with Mac and Li Ann in their current dynamic, and he had ways of fighting back. Such as unilaterally declaring a compromise. "I'll keep Taylor out of your way," Vic said, "but we're going to stay outdoors. Where we can watch to make sure you're okay."

Mac shrugged. "Fine."

* * *

Vic and Li Ann settled on the back porch with Taylor. They brought out a blanket to sit on, some blocks, and Gaga the doll.

From where Vic sat, he could see Mac and the punching bag framed in the gaps between the wooden railings. Mac had wrapped his hands before he'd gone down, with Vic's assistance. Now, as Vic watched, he struck a boxer's pose and started jabbing at the tires.

"Can I play with her?" Li Ann asked.

"Hm?" Vic looked over. Li Ann was sitting cross-legged, watching Taylor and looking a bit anxious. Taylor, meanwhile, was sitting near Vic's knees, sucking on Gaga's toes and ignoring Li Ann. "Of course you can. Here, make a tower out of the three blocks so that she can knock it down. She loves that game."

Looking a little dubious, Li Ann piled the three lightweight blocks in a carefully-aligned stack.

"Hey, Taytay, look what Mommy made!" Vic singsonged, pointing at the tower. "Wanna knock it down?"

Taylor followed Vic's finger, grinned, and crawled over to the tower. She slapped it with an open hand. "Aww faww down!" she gloated happily. And then looked hopefully at Li Ann. "Again!"

"Go for it, Mommy," Vic said.

Li Ann started re-stacking the blocks, but grimaced. "Just call me Li Ann, okay?"

"We still have a cover to maintain here," Vic pointed out. "I'm sorry, I know this must be very weird for you."

She shook her head. "You have no idea."

"Again!" Taylor chirped, scattering the blocks.

"I gave her up," Li Ann said. She started placing the blocks again, this time offsetting them by a forty-five degree rotation. "The Director made it clear that I would never see her again—no contact, no information."

"That must have been a very difficult thing to agree to," Vic said softly.

But she shook her head. "It was perfect. It was what I wanted. I wanted a fresh start—no reminders of what I'd lost."

"A fresh start..." Vic repeated thoughtfully. "This sheds a bit of new light on the way you proposed to me after we'd been dating for three months."

"Hm. Sorry about that," she said.

Vic shrugged. "It made me pretty happy at the time. And, well—I guess it all turned out okay in the end."

Li Ann let out a bit of a laugh. "Right. Look at us now."

"Again!" Taylor said, and clapped her hands. But then she turned away as Li Ann started rebuilding the tower, and headed for the stairs. "Taytay want Daddy."

"Nope," Vic said, catching her. "Not so fast, little girl. Daddy's working out way too hard. You don't want to get stepped on by accident, do you?" Down by the tire punching bag, Mac was flowing from one kick to the next, spinning and ducking and punching. "How about you work out up here, Taytay? Punch my hands." He held out his hands for her, the way Mac had shown him yesterday.

Taytay grinned. She lifted her arms over her head and then slapped down at his hands with her little clenched fists. She missed entirely on the left side, but the right side made solid contact. "Ha!" she exclaimed.

"Nice job, Taytay," Vic said, and held his hands out for her to do it again.

Li Ann withdrew a little; tucked her knees up to her chest. "I didn't know how to face this," she said. "I never expected to see her again ... and then there she was. And she was calling me Mommy but I tried to put her to bed that night and she spent four hours crying for her real mother. That's why I ran. I'm sorry."

"I guess I understand." Vic moved his hands; Taylor giggled and hit them again. "I mean, I can't imagine what that must have felt like. I wish you'd talked to us about it, though, instead of leaving."

She shrugged, and didn't say anything.

"So you're ready to face her now?"

"Well," she smiled weakly, "I came back." Then she gave Taylor a doubtful look. "I don't think she's very interested in me, though."

"She barely knows you," Vic pointed out. "Give her time."

Li Ann wrinkled her nose. "She bonded with _Mac_ right away."

"Mac charms people. It's one of his skills. Apparently it also works on two-year-olds."

"Hm," Li Ann said. Then she held out a hand to Taylor. "Hi, Taylor. Could I have a hug?"

"No!" Taylor said emphatically, and climbed into Vic's lap so that she could bury her head against his chest.

Li Ann gave Vic a rueful look.

"Give her _time_," Vic repeated. And then had a weird thought. "Hey, do you think maybe the Director gave us this mission as a _favour_ to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe she thought it would be nice for you to have the chance to meet your daughter."

Li Ann let out a sharp, disbelieving laugh.

"No, seriously," Vic said. "I mean, keep in mind that the Director has only a shaky, purely hypothetical understanding of normal human emotions."

Li Ann laughed again, but more warmly this time. "Oh my God," she said. "Maybe you're right."

* * *

After a while, Taylor got bored and fussy on the porch. Vic took her down onto the lawn to play chase, making sure to keep her well clear of Mac's space. Li Ann sat on the steps, sipped a glass of ice water, and watched them all.

Eventually, 'chase' turned into 'tickle', which turned into 'rolling around on the grass', which turned into 'making mud pies,' which turned into 'wallowing in the mud'. At which point Vic decided that Taylor would need a bath before lunch.

Vic left Li Ann in charge of Mac-supervision, and brought Taylor inside. It took _two_ water changes in the tub to get her clean. By the time she was spotless, Vic was soaked from head to toe and fairly grimy.

He released her from the bathroom wearing nothing but a diaper, and went to look for adult backup.

Mac was just coming in the back door. He was flushed and gleaming with sweat, little trickles of it running down his shoulders and along his collarbone. He was breathing hard, but not wheezing. He grinned at Vic. "Oh man, that felt _so_ good."

"I'm glad," Vic said. "Hey, could you take Taylor while I have a shower?"

"_I_ need a shower," Mac said.

"Sweat is clean," Vic pointed out. "I'm covered in mud. I get to shower first."

Li Ann, who'd just followed Mac in, said, "Why don't you shower together? I'll watch Taylor."

"Really?" Vic said. "Are you sure?"

She nodded. "I owe you."

Vic turned to Mac. "What do you think?"

He grinned. "Sounds efficient. Let's do it."

"Okay..." Vic turned to Li Ann. "She can play in the living room or in the bedrooms. You can read her books, or let her jump on the mattress, or whatever. The whole place is pretty baby-proof, actually, just be careful not to let her pull out any drawers in the kitchen. Keep her indoors, I don't want her getting muddy again before lunch."

"Got it," Li Ann said.

Vic cleared his throat. "And don't run away to New York while we're in the shower?"

Li Ann winced, but then managed a grin. "_Got_ it."

* * *

In the shower, Mac soaped up a washcloth and started rubbing Vic down. "You _are_ pretty muddy," he murmured, while using his free hand to cup Vic's balls.

Vic felt himself go hard in quick reaction, and oh man that felt good, _but_ he didn't want to get distracted; there was something he wanted to talk to Mac about. "Not now," he said, batting Mac's hand away from his bits.

"Hm? Okay," Mac said, and with a shrug turned his two-handed attention to chastely rubbing the cloth over Vic's arms.

"You've been avoiding Taylor," Vic said.

"What? No I haven't."

"Yes you have. Ever since last night."

Mac hunched his shoulders a little. "Okay. Yes. I have. Can you blame me? That was some pretty shocking information Li Ann dropped on us last night."

"Well, yeah. But I still don't get why you're suddenly acting like Taylor _scares_ you. You've had this amazing bond with her from the very beginning."

Mac handed Vic the washcloth and stepped out of the spray. "Vic, I thought I was _pretending_."

"You were pretending to like her?"

"No, I was pretending to be her father!" He put his hands on his head, looking a bit panicky. "It was a, a _case_! A _con_!"

"You felt like you were conning her?" That really wasn't the vibe Vic had ever gotten from Mac's interactions with Taylor.

"What? No, not _her_. _She_ knows I'm not her father. I was conning the _world_ into thinking I was her dad. Taytay and I were in it together. I thought of her as a _partner_."

Well, that was a fascinating insight. "And now it turns out that you really _are_ her dad. Okay. I can see how that throws you for a loop. But you can't just stop interacting with her, Mac! We have to look after her until the Director comes for us, and we don't know how long that will be. Your ID says you're her dad. And you're definitely her favourite parent-type person here. If you withdraw from her, she's going to be really upset."

"Yes," Mac said, giving Vic a wild look. "_Exactly_. So what happens when we have to _give her back_?"

"Well, I bet she'll miss you," Vic ventured. "But she'll probably be really happy to see her Mama and Baba again."

Mac shook his head, still looking very distressed. "Vic, if I'm not _pretending_ to be her father, then I'm not _pretending_ to love her, either."

"And by not pretending, you mean—ah. That you really do love her." Oh Jesus. This was a complication.

"It was all supposed to be _fake_!" Mac said, desperately. "And now it isn't, and I don't know what to do! Vic, I don't know how I'm going to give her back!"

Vic stopped himself from saying that it had only been a month. It had been a very intense month, and Mac had been the one spending the most time with Taylor, by far. Come to think of it, for most of the month, with Mac and Vic's relationship in pieces and Li Ann AWOL, Taylor had been all that Mac _had_.

And she was, in fact, his kid.

Vic realized that he had no idea what to say. So he hugged Mac tight, instead.

"I thought, maybe it's not too late to fix it," Mac said against Vic's neck. "If I just cool it down, let _you_ look after her..."

"Oh, Mac," Vic murmured, putting a hand on the back of Mac's head and massaging his scalp under the hot shower spray, "you know that's not how it works. You're not going to stop loving the kid now."

Between the noise and the wetness of the shower, Vic's only clue that Mac had started to cry was the way the rhythm of his breathing changed. Then the sobs got louder, audible over the hiss and spatter of the water. Vic hung on tight, rubbing Mac's back. "Shh," he soothed, even though he wasn't sure if Mac could hear him. "It's gonna be okay."

Except Vic couldn't see any way out of this that didn't end in heartbreak.

What the _fuck_ had the Director been thinking?

* * *

After lunch, Vic assembled the bookshelf that they'd bought the previous day, and the slide.

In retrospect, that had been a lot of money to spend on things that they didn't really need. Their cash envelope was rapidly dwindling, and they still had no idea how long it would be before the Director resolved her international crisis and called them back in.

On the other hand, the living room looked a whole lot better with the books, movies and toys stowed neatly on the shelves instead of scattered around the floor. And when they took the slide down into the backyard and saw Taylor's excitement when they set her loose on it, Vic found that he had no regrets.

Following the conversation in the shower, Mac had stopped actively trying to distance himself from Taylor. His interactions with her remained a little subdued at first, but by mid-afternoon he was back to calling her Taytay and handling her with casual affection. His eyes were maybe a little sad, but that was all.

Li Ann, meanwhile, was making a very concerted effort to get involved. She was pretty awkward and stiff to start with; Vic cringed inwardly but gave her encouraging smiles. Then Mac obviously noticed what was going on, and started facilitating. When afternoon nap-time rolled around, Taylor curled up on Mac's lap on the couch, sucking her thumb, while Li Ann leaned against his side and read _Moo, Baa, La La La!_ out loud.

Vic wished he could take a picture of them. They looked like a perfect little family.

He'd always sort of wanted one of those.


	11. Chapter 11

The weeks that followed were some of the most idyllic of Vic's life.

He had Mac's affection back. He'd missed that so much. Missed Mac's constant little touches, kisses, his laughs and his teasing and poking, the warm way he looked at Vic, and his grins.

Having Li Ann back, too, was such a relief. Her absence had been a gaping hole, Vic realized in retrospect. For all that she seemed pretty self-contained, she was an essential part of their unit. Her cool, mature approach to life tempered Mac's sometimes overwhelmingly needy intensity.

Their work wasn't hard. All they had to do was keep Taylor safe, and keep their little household running. Vic was willing to do all the cooking—he liked it, honestly—but he insisted that Mac and Li Ann start pitching in on the cleaning. It turned out that neither of them actually had much of a clue how to do that.

"That's what the cleaning lady is for," Mac said with a shrug the first time Vic asked him how he'd gotten this far in life without even knowing how to scrub a bathroom sink.

"You know she's _definitely_ a spy for the Director, right?"

"Well, duh, the Agency sends her."

"I'd rather do my own cleaning and keep my privacy."

Mac rolled his eyes. "Like we ever had any privacy." But he let Vic show him how to clean the bathroom.

Taylor was thriving. She was cheerful most of the time now, and constantly on the move, babbling and playing. She'd warmed up to Li Ann, and happily demanded her attention along with Mac's and Vic's. Really, three adults fully dedicated to her care and entertainment seemed to be just about the right ratio for Taylor; Vic occasionally wondered how Geneviève and Huang had managed with just the two of them.

She did still wake up crying at night sometimes, and when that happened, Mac was the only one who could console her. As a result, their sleeping arrangements were constantly in flux. They took turns putting Taylor to bed. If Mac was the one who did it, he tended to fall asleep next to her on the mattress. If Vic or Li Ann put Taylor to bed, then she'd be left on her own but with the door open to make sure they'd hear if she woke up. Then, either Mac and Vic would sleep together in the other room and Li Ann would take the couch, or all three adults would curl up together (Mac in the middle, always). Vic always slept in the adults' bedroom, but he never exactly knew who he would wake up next to in the morning. He might fall asleep cuddling Mac, and wake up in the morning to find Taylor upside down in between them, sleepily kicking Vic's face. Or maybe Mac would disappear off to Taylor's room in the middle of the night and Vic would find himself chastely sharing the mattress with a sleepy, half-naked Li Ann who had no interest in touching him. Or on an evening when Mac had fallen asleep next to Taylor, Vic might start the night alone, and then wake up in the morning to discover that for some reason _everyone_ had ended up in bed with him, and he was an inch away from being crowded right off the mattress.

Despite the ongoing nighttime game of musical beds, Vic was sleeping really well. His nightmares about killing the perimeter guard hadn't come back. He felt obscurely guilty about that (guilty about not being tormented by guilt?), especially when Mac gently asked him how he was doing. Vic ended up talking it out with Li Ann one day when he and she were alone together. Once he'd explained the whole thing to her, and answered affirmatively her question about whether he still felt bad about having killed the guard the way he had, she sensibly suggested that it had been the tension of _hiding_ his guilt that had been tearing him up inside. His confession to Mac had relieved him of that tension—thus, the disappearance of the dreams.

Mac was doing pretty well too, nightmare-wise. In his case that didn't mean that they'd stopped entirely—Vic understood that that was too much to hope for—but they were infrequent, not more than once or twice a week. He tended to want a lot of extra hugs the next day, but that was fine; everyone was available to give them to him, including Taylor.

Sex with Mac was back to being fun, frequent and unproblematic. It wasn't too hard to find opportunities. If they started out the night alone in the adults' bedroom, they'd usually have sex before bed. Li Ann was also very helpful about looking after Taylor while they showered together. Taylor's afternoon nap was another good time; Li Ann would read quietly on the couch while Mac and Vic locked themselves in the adults' bedroom. Afterwards, Mac usually wanted a nap himself. Vic teased him gently about the roll-over-and-fall-asleep thing, but he enjoyed feeling Mac relax and drift away in his arms. Vic didn't generally want afternoon naps himself, so after a while he'd get up and join Li Ann in the living room, or maybe get started making dinner.

Vic did notice with some concern that Mac seemed to want a lot of sleep. There were the afternoon naps, the fact that he always fell asleep early if he was putting Taylor to bed, and also the fact that he tended to sleep in a couple of hours later than the rest of them in the morning (Li Ann and Vic had, between them, entirely taken over the six a.m. to eight a.m. childcare shift). But then, Mac was also the one getting up with Taylor in the middle of the night—which, Vic supposed, at least partly balanced it out.

Li Ann's knee healed up nicely. Even before she got rid of the brace, she started doing some careful sparring with Mac, and by mid-August she had the brace off and was moving freely. The two of them liked to work out for several hours every morning. Taylor enjoyed staying nearby, playing with her doll or imitating them. Vic joined them too sometimes, not for the fancy stuff but just to practice jabs and crosses, because Mac had been right; this was proving to be a very long interlude, and Vic didn't want to turn into a slug.

A few times a week they popped the jogging stroller in the trunk of the car and made the ten minute drive to a provincial park, where they could go running along the quiet gravel road that linked the park entrance and the campsites. For the first couple of weeks Li Ann walked, rather than running. Mac and Vic would go on ahead and then circle back to her. Later, she joined them in the running—cautiously at first, and then with confidence.

Always wary about Mac and Li Ann's unhealed lung damage, Vic made sure that they never went flat-out on the runs. He always pushed the jogging stroller himself, which meant plenty of extra resistance training for him, and he naturally set a slower pace that way. Mac and Li Ann never seemed to have any serious trouble with breathing, but he noticed that they both faithfully used the rescue inhaler before they started running, and occasionally Mac asked Li Ann for it half-way through as well.

Considering the double use that Li Ann's meds were being put to, Vic wasn't surprised when, one day at breakfast about three weeks into August, she raised the concern that she was going to run out soon.

"Do you know your prescription?" Mac asked. "I still have some blank sheets from the clinic doctor's pad."

Vic gave him a sharp look. "You stole more than one?"

"I took five," Mac said, as though it was no big deal. "I thought they might come in handy later."

Vic had concerns about this method of getting medication, but he had to concede that they lacked any better alternatives. The more time that passed, the less likely it seemed that Chinese intelligence would connect Mac and Li Ann to the cabin fire via their injuries—but it remained a risk, and the stakes were just too high.

* * *

One afternoon towards the end of August, they were all sitting in the grass in the backyard, drinking lemonade that Vic had made, when Pat crossed over from her own yard, waving.

"Hi!" she said. "I just saw you all there, and I wondered if now would be a good time to bring Taylor over into my studio to try making a pot?"

"Oh yeah, sure!" Mac said.

"I'd offer you some lemonade," Vic added apologetically, "but we actually only have three glasses."

"We used to have four," Li Ann mentioned, "but Vic broke one."

"In that case," Pat said, "maybe you'd like to pick out a mug to take as a gift? I enjoy making them, so I have a _lot_."

So they all headed across the yards to Pat's studio, with Taylor trotting along on her own but holding Mac's hand.

Vic hadn't seen the inside of the studio before. It smelled like paint and clay. Shelves lined the walls, covered with painted and unpainted plates, mugs, bowls, and pots. There was a workbench in the middle, its wooden surface stained and spattered. Off to one side Vic recognized a potter's wheel, and an oven-like thing that he supposed was a kiln.

Pat put a bit of clay on the wheel and demonstrated how she could pinch it and guide it as the wheel spun, turning it into a little bowl. "Would you like to give it a try?" she asked Taylor.

"Taytay do!" Taylor exclaimed, waving her hands.

Pat stood up and nudged her little stool towards Mac. "You'd better hold her on your lap," she suggested.

Unsurprisingly, Taylor turned out to have enthusiasm but very little skill. Her natural impulse was to hit the clay, rather than guide it. After a bit Mac reached in and put his hands over hers and tried to help; the shape that began to emerge looked like a sort of wobbly plate, rather than a bowl. They seemed to be having fun, though. Taylor was chortling with delight, and Mac was grinning.

Li Ann, meanwhile, was looking over the shelf of mugs. "I like this one," she said, holding up a white-glazed one with a stylized turtle painted on its side.

Pat smiled. "It's yours, if you want it. That's an Ojibwe design, or at least my version of one."

"What's 'ojibwe'?" Li Ann asked, turning the mug over in her hands.

"Well, they're a _people_," Pat said, looking moderately perturbed. "The original inhabitants of this area, before the European settlers came. Maybe you're more familiar with the name Chippewa?"

Li Ann shook her head. "Sorry."

"Are you Ojibwe?" Vic jumped in quickly. Li Ann had been born and raised in Vancouver, according to her cover story. The idea that someone who'd done all their schooling in Canada would never even have _heard_ of the Ojibwe ... was not nearly implausible enough to endanger their cover, actually, but it was embarrassing. Vic, anyway, was embarrassed.

"Half," Pat said. "My mother was Ojibwe. My father was Irish-descended."

"So you learned the artistic style from your mother?" Li Ann asked.

"No, unfortunately." Pat picked up another one of the pieces—a plate with multicoloured birds circling its rim—and turned it absently in her hands. "She died when I was seven, and I never had contact with her family. I look up the designs in books. It's a way of trying to connect with her, with her people—but you couldn't really say that what I do is authentic." She looked sad. "I didn't even _know_ that my mother was Ojibwe, before she died. My father told me a few years later, when I was having trouble with some of the other children at school. I was very angry when I found out—upset that something like that had been _hidden_ from me, and confused about what it meant, about who I _was_." She shook her head, and put the plate back on the shelf. "I think I understand my mother better now. My father finally told me just before _he_ died that my mother had gone through one of the residential schools. She was taken away from _her_ parents when she was five years old, and she never saw them again."

"Residential schools?" Mac asked, looking up from Taylor's pot/bowl/plate thingy. "What's that?"

"A kind of boarding school," Vic said. "That Native kids were sent to." Which was pretty much the extent of his knowledge.

"They were set up by the Canadian government and run by the churches," Pat added. "I've talked to some survivors, trying to understand what sort of experience my mother would have had. They were a terrible thing. They were intended from the start to separate the Native children from their own language and culture. The conditions were miserable, abuse was rampant ... but the worst thing, of course, was ripping the children away from their parents."

And all of a sudden, the mood in the studio was very, very awkward.

"Again!" Taylor chirped into the momentary silence. "Daddy do!"

"I'll do my best, Taytay," Mac said, sort of mushing the plate thing upwards. "I don't have Pat's skills, though."

Li Ann cleared her throat, looking at the mug she was still holding. "I was adopted."

"Hm?" Pat looked up in surprise. "Oh, my dear—I apologize if what I just said came across the wrong way. Of course I don't know anything about your situation."

"My parents gave me up," Li Ann said. "When I think about them, I feel ... hardly anything at all."

"The family that adopted you," Pat said, "may I ask—were they Asian? Or white?"

"Chinese," Li Ann answered.

"So at least you got to stay in contact with your culture."

"I was also adopted by a Chinese family!" Mac contributed from the corner.

Vic winced, and braced himself to create a very sudden distraction if Mac seemed like he was about to say anything about Triad gangs.

Pat, meanwhile, looked a bit startled. "That's a little unusual, if you don't mind my saying so."

Mac shrugged. "I grew up in Hong Kong." Then he said something in Cantonese.

Li Ann said something in reply, and then turned to Pat. "We should probably be going. Thanks so much for letting Taylor try out the pottery wheel. And thanks for the mug! It's really lovely."

* * *

That night, it was Mac's turn to put Taylor to bed, but Vic said that he'd do it instead. He didn't want Mac falling asleep beside her. "And put on some tea," Vic added. "Not the ginger stuff, though."

"Um, okay," Mac said, giving Vic a bit of a funny look.

So once Taylor was asleep, Vic joined Mac and Li Ann at the dining room table. Mac had lemon balm tea ready in the teapot, and three mugs sitting out—including the new one from Pat, which he'd put at Li Ann's place.

Vic waited until Mac had poured the tea, and then he said, "I think that we should run away."

Mac and Li Ann both stared at him, frozen, for at least three breaths. Then Li Ann said, "_What?_"

"I think that we should take Taylor, and disappear. Leave the Agency. Li Ann, you already _did_ it. If you hadn't come back, we never would've found you. Mac, you said it when Li Ann left—it's the perfect time. Nobody's checking on us. We've already been out here for nearly two _months_—who knows how long it will be before the Director realizes we're gone? Plenty of time to get far, far away."

Mac gave a tiny head-shake. "The Director gave us the IDs. She could track us by them."

"Oh come on, like you two don't know how to get new fake IDs? _I_ know how to get fake IDs."

Mac still looked skeptical. "Getting into a bar or bluffing our way into a secure facility is one thing. Setting up a _life_, though—Vic, you know that stuff is centrally tracked. _We_ use the government databases when we're looking for people."

"Okay, we couldn't stay in Canada. Obviously. We'd have to go somewhere with, say, a looser bureaucracy."

"And then what?" Li Ann asked. "Live as fugitives? Criminals? Vic, I don't think you've thought this through."

"Oh, and you have?"

"I _have_," she sighed. "In detail. This is exactly what Mac and I were planning when we _did_ run, three years ago. And I've had a lot of time since then to think about how it never would have worked."

"Hey, well," Mac started— and then stopped himself, deflating a little. "No, you're right. It would have been a disaster. And we didn't know that you were _pregnant_."

Okay, how to put this delicately? "It probably wouldn't have worked with just the two of you, back when you ran from the Tangs," Vic conceded. "Three years ago—you were both dealing with a lot of stuff, you didn't really have it together. But look at us now. The _three_ of us. We know how to support each other. We're a great team."

"Four," Mac said.

"Huh?"

"Four of us. You're talking about running _with_ Taylor."

"Right. Yes." Vic swallowed, tried to gauge their expressions. Li Ann was looking aggressively blank. Mac looked cautious. "Well, that's sort of the whole _point_, isn't it? She's _your_ kid. She should be with her parents."

"Vic, is this about what Pat said earlier?" Li Ann asked. "Because she was talking about an entirely different situation. She was talking about children being _stolen_ from their parents, by the government. I gave Taylor up. Willingly."

"Did you really, though?" Vic returned. "I mean, what kind of other choices did you have, at the time? And Mac, you _never_ gave her up."

Mac gave Vic a quelling look, and squeezed Li Ann's hand. "I wasn't there. I was dead, as far as she knew. It was Li Ann's call."

"The Director took your baby," Vic said to Li Ann. "She traded her for military secrets, and used the deal to recruit you to her shadowy government agency. Now you have a chance to get your daughter back, get your _life_ back."

"Yeah, about that," Mac said. "Does something here feel a little fishy? Like, don't you think it would have _occurred_ to the Director that Li Ann would figure out who Taylor was? And that we'd all notice how easy it would be to run away while nobody's watching us?"

"I've never given her the impression that I want to run away," Li Ann commented.

"Yeah? Well _I_ sure have," Mac said. "All the fucking time. And any time it seems like she's giving me an opening, it turns out to be some kind of trick, or trap."

"You think this is a trap?" Vic asked.

"Or a test," Li Ann suggested. "To see how loyal we really are."

"If we run away and we cover our trail well enough," Vic said, "it doesn't matter if we fail her test."

Mac shook his head. Kept shaking it. "No no no, Vic, we can't be talking about this. Can't do it. I _do_ want to run, you _know_ I do, I'll go in a _heartbeat_ if you two will come with me, but _after_ we get Taylor back to her parents."

"_You're_ her parents."

"No, we're not," Li Ann said quietly. "Geneviève and Huang are."

"Says who? The Director?"

"Vic," Mac said, "who's my father?"

Vic blinked at him. "Huh?"

"That man who blew through town last summer? You know, the one who fucked my mother nine months before I was born, visited us like, four times in my whole life, and then abandoned me in Hong Kong when I was thirteen? Or the Tang godfather, who took me in and raised me?"

"Uh, do I actually have to pick one of those?" Vic asked. "Because I see what you're getting at, but ... Mr. Tang put out a fucking _hit_ on you, with a three million dollar bounty."

"Family isn't biology," Li Ann said, backing up Mac's point and ignoring Vic's.

"Okay, I don't really get why you're resisting this so hard," Vic said. "Maybe family _isn't_ just biology—I mean okay, _yes_, that is absolutely true, I concede that—but what are we, right here, right now, if we're not a family? We're not just pretending. Mac, you told me _weeks_ ago that you love Taylor, that it's going to practically kill you to give her back."

Mac winced, and Li Ann gave him a slightly startled look. Which surprised Vic, actually—how could she possibly have missed noticing the way that Mac and Taylor absolutely adored each other?

But then Li Ann had always been pretty good at protecting herself from feelings by pretending that they didn't exist.

"Vic," Mac said, "why are you _pushing_ this so hard? She's not even your kid."

That was a good question, actually, wasn't it? "You _just_ finished saying that biology doesn't matter," Vic said. "So ... I'm pushing for this because _we_ are a family. Taylor's your kid. I'm your lover. So I'm basically her step-dad. And ... do you think _I_ haven't started to care about her? I have! And I care about how I've _never_ seen you happy like this, before. And _I've_ never felt happy like this, before. I want this to be real. I want us to be a family. And I want _out_ of the Agency before we have another mission like the one we had on Canada Day." (The kick of the gun in his hand. The guard's dead eyes. Oh, look, he wasn't over it yet. It was still lurking in the back of his mind. The flames licking over the body.)

"Vic," Mac's voice was calling him back, and he felt Mac holding his hand. "We _can_ run. We _will_, I promise. Since the Tangs were destroyed, the only thing keeping me at the Agency has been you and Li Ann. But we can't take Taylor. I _do_ love her, and that's _why_ I know we can't take her. Geneviève and Huang are her parents, and she misses them so much! And anyway, we'd be _awful_ parents."

"What are you talking about?" Vic asked. "You're _amazing_ with her."

"We're doing okay right now," Mac said. "Holed up in the safe house. All we have to do is feed her, play with her, and keep her clean. We're not parenting her, we're _babysitting_ her until her real parents come back for her. We're in a holding pattern. If we ran? If we tried to really _be_ her parents? What the hell do Li Ann and I know about how to be parents? Li Ann's parents sold her into prostitution. My mom brought me along on her meetings with heavily-armed drug kingpins. My father abandoned me. The _best_ parent we ever had was a Triad crime lord."

"Your parents were awful," Vic had to concede. "But that doesn't mean you can't do better. And you've got _me_. At least I had normal parents."

Li Ann raised an eyebrow. "Vic, you hate your parents."

"Okay, sure," he admitted, "but that's _normal_, we-didn't-get-along-when-I-was-a-teenager stuff. They weren't criminals, they didn't abuse me. They took me to peewee hockey, and the library, they made me do my homework and go to bed on time—they kind of suck as _people_, but they were okay parents." Huh, that was the first time he'd ever thought of them in such positive terms. A matter of perspective, maybe.

"If we went on the run with Taylor," Mac said, "_we_ would be criminals."

"Technically, maybe, yes, if the Director made the adoption paperwork happen above-board," Vic said. "But she's still your kid."

"No, I mean we'd be _living_ as criminals," Mac said. "How the hell do you think we'd support ourselves, in this as-yet-to-be-determined nation with a weak bureaucracy? What kind of job skills do we have? Um, let's see." He started counting off on his fingers. "Stealing, fighting, shooting people..."

"We _have_ other skills," Vic said. "I was a cop."

"And do you think you could get a job as one?" Mac asked.

"I mean, whatever! We could wait tables, sweep _floors_. We'd figure something out."

Mac scowled. "Yeah, and what kind of life would that be for Taylor? Geneviève and Huang are _good_ parents, they're giving her a _good_ life."

"We don't know anything _about_ what they're like as parents," Vic pointed out, "other than the fact that they got Taylor kidnapped by Chinese commandos."

"Vic," Li Ann said, putting down her mug of tea, "I think I'd like to talk to Mac alone. Would you be willing to sleep on the couch tonight, so that he and I can have the green bedroom?"

"Huh?" Vic looked from Li Ann to Mac. Li Ann's expression was very carefully controlled. Mac was clutching his mug, and his knee was bouncing under the table. "You want to discuss this _without_ me? Li Ann, this affects me just as much as it does the two of you."

She nodded. "It does. But you've made your position clear. Mac and I need to talk."

That sounded like ... maybe she was considering it.

When Vic had brought up the idea, he'd expected Mac to be on board right away. He knew that Mac loved Taylor, and he knew that Mac wanted to get away from the Agency. Vic had been totally blindsided by Mac's resistance.

Vic had been less certain of what to expect from Li Ann. After all, she'd run away _from_ Taylor, at first—stayed away for three whole weeks. But Vic was pretty sure now that that had been Li Ann trying to protect herself from renewed feelings of grief and loss.

Maybe Li Ann would turn out to be his ally, here. And if anybody could talk Mac into something, she could.

He hunched his shoulders, and gave in. "Okay. I'll sleep on the couch."

* * *

Vic woke up at some point in the middle of the night, to sounds and light coming from the kitchen. He sat up, blinking to clear his eyes, and saw Mac moving around in the kitchen with Taylor draped over his shoulder. She was fussing fitfully.

"Oh, sorry," Mac said in a hushed tone, seeing Vic looking at him. "Didn't mean to wake you. I'm just getting some water."

"Do you want a hand?"

"Nah, I've got it." He was, in fact, managing to unscrew the sippy cup lid one-handed—an impressive feat.

"Seriously, let me help." Vic made it to the kitchen in time to take custody of the cup once it was filled, and to twist its lid back in an easy two-handed gesture. "Here," he handed it to Taylor, who blinked teary eyes at him and started sucking.

"Okay, thanks. You can go back to sleep now." Mac turned back towards the hallway to the bedrooms.

"Wait," Vic stopped him with a hand on his arm. "What did you and Li Ann decide?"

Mac didn't look at him. "We can talk about that in the morning."

Vic's heart sank. "You decided to stay."

"We can talk about it in the morning," Mac repeated, very quietly. Still looking at the wall.

"Um, okay," Vic said. He realized that now, in the middle of the night, was not the right time to try to make his case again. "Ah, are you going to be sleeping in Taylor's room for the rest of the night?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Can I come with you?"

"Sure, if you promise just sleeping. No arguing."

"No arguing," Vic agreed.

He followed Mac into Taylor's room. It was dimly lit by a nightlight plugged into one of the wall outlets.

Vic sat on the bed and watched, silently, as Mac started pacing back and forth, holding Taylor and rubbing her back. When the sippy cup sagged in Taylor's grasp, Vic darted in to catch it before it fell. Then he went back to sitting, and Mac continued pacing. Vic got the feeling after a while that Mac was deliberately avoiding looking at him. He didn't say anything, though, because he'd promised no arguing.

Eventually—maybe fifteen minutes later?—Mac seemed satisfied that Taylor was fully asleep. He approached the bed, kneeled carefully, and laid her down on the right side of the mattress. "You take the other side," he whispered to Vic, shooing him over to the far left. "I want the middle."

Once they'd carefully eased into their places, avoiding jostling the mattress, Mac rolled towards Vic and put an arm around his waist. He tucked his head in under Vic's chin, pressing his forehead against Vic's collarbone. It was basically his favourite sleeping position, except usually when curling up to sleep he didn't _squeeze_ Vic like he was right now.

"You okay?" Vic whispered.

Mac shook his head, and made a little noise, almost like a hiccup—oh. A cut-off sob.

Shit.

Vic felt wetness against his chest, felt Mac's shuddering breaths, and realized Mac was crying.

Vic put his arms around Mac, in turn. Held him tight, listened to his nearly-silent weeping. "I'm sorry," Vic whispered, murmured, against Mac's hair. "I'm so sorry."

* * *

Taylor woke up around six in the morning, as usual. Vic woke up to the feeling of her patting his face—because yeah, by now _she_ knew the drill. Daddy didn't do mornings. Mac had rolled over away from them both and tucked his arms over his head with a little moan.

Vic changed Taylor's diaper, brought her to the kitchen, gave her some cereal and started the coffee. Li Ann came out of the other room about five minutes later. Vic handed her a mug.

She sipped it; looked at him over the brim. "We're not going to run," she said quietly.

"I know," Vic said. "I was up with Mac and Taylor for a while in the middle of the night."

"He told you?"

Vic shook his head. Leaned against the counter and put down his own coffee. "He didn't say anything about it. But he cried in my arms for a while after he got Taylor back to sleep."

Li Ann lowered her head for a moment, then brought it back up to gaze steadily at Vic. "I'm sorry," she said. "But this really is the best way."

Vic took a slow breath. In, and out. Picked up his coffee again, and just held it.

Let go of the fantasy he'd had, of a hazy white-picket-fence future with Mac, Li Ann and Taylor. It had been a stupid, unrealistic dream. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry, too."

* * *

A few days later, it was September.


	12. Chapter 12

The arrival of September gave Vic a bit of a mental kick in the pants.

They were still at the safe house. They were still looking after Taylor. The Director hadn't come for them yet.

July, August—the first two months at the safe house had felt sort of like a summer vacation, for all that it had been nearly twenty years since Vic had graduated from high school. But now it was _September_. Time for new beginnings, and getting ready for a quick hard slide into winter. Time to get serious.

They didn't talk any more about the possibility of running away. Vic understood that that wasn't going to happen. But something that Mac had said during that argument had stuck with Vic—Mac's observation that they were in a holding pattern, babysitting Taylor rather than parenting her.

Well, maybe they weren't going to run away and become her real parents. But with two months already under their belts and no end in sight, Vic realized that it was about time that they started taking seriously the Director's comment that she _might_ leave them out here for a full year.

If they might be looking after Taylor for a _year_, they'd damn well better stop babysitting Taylor and start raising her.

So on their next trip into Sudbury, Vic bought a parenting book.

He started panicking almost immediately after he started reading it.

"We should be potty-training her! She should be playing with other children! She should be using _pronouns_! Has either of you ever heard her use a pronoun?"

"Shhhh," Li Ann soothed him, in approximately the same tone that she used whenever Taylor fell down and started crying. She leaned over from the other end of the couch and put a hand on his shoulder. "She's fine, Vic. I mean, we can work on those things, I guess. But look at her. She is _fine_."

Taylor was sitting on the floor with Mac, building a block tower. She was squinting with intensity, setting the sixth block on top of her wobbly, leaning tower. When she let go, the whole thing fell over. She laughed, got up, and ran in a circle around the living room/dining room, bouncing into every wall as she went.

Vic flipped through the pages of the book. "She's two and a half. It says here that she should be able to build a tower _eight_ blocks high."

Mac looked up. "Vic, we literally only have six blocks. There were six blocks in the package of blocks that we bought when we moved in."

"We should buy more blocks," Vic said, and went back to reading.

* * *

They bought more blocks. And more books to read to Taylor. And a small plastic training potty, and a book about toilet-training.

And then Vic counted the money left in their cash envelope, and found another thing to panic about.

He brought it up at dinner. "You guys," he said, "we have a problem. We're running out of money."

Mac looked up from cutting Taylor's meatloaf into little pieces for her. "Since when? Don't we have, like, thousands of dollars left?"

"Sure. A little over four thousand." Vic frowned. "At the rate we're spending money right now, we're going to run out in early-to-mid November."

"Well, _November_," Mac said. "That's a long time from now. You think we'll still be here in November?"

"We could be."

"What do you think we should do?" Li Ann asked. "Cut back our spending?"

Vic shook his head. "There's not a lot we can _cut_. Food, gas, hydro, your medications—just with the basics, we're spending at least sixteen hundred a month. I think we're going to have to do what the Director suggested at the beginning. At least one of us is going to have to get a job.

* * *

The first day of job-hunting in Sudbury was an eye-opening failure.

Sure, the Director had provided them with driver's licenses and social insurance numbers. They legally _could_ work. But that didn't mean that anybody necessarily wanted to hire them.

They had no references. No work history. No proof of education, for that matter.

And no _phone_.

"We're going to have to get a phone," Li Ann said, when they met at lunchtime at the fish and chips place to compare notes. "How are we going to get work if nobody can call us?"

"I thought we _liked_ the fact that nobody could call us," Mac said, handing Taylor a french fry. "Makes us harder to find."

"We could get an unlisted number," Vic said. "But that costs extra. And it probably wouldn't help anyway—if the MSS starts looking for us by name, do you think they'll give up if they don't find us in the phone book?"

"Did anybody have _any_ success?" Li Ann asked.

"Well, I found a playgroup for Taylor," Mac said, pulling a photocopied flyer out of his pocket and flattening it on the table. "It's free, at least. Tuesdays and Thursdays, nine to eleven. We could take her once a week, maybe, combine it with the grocery trip?"

* * *

The second, third, and forth days of job-hunting also went nowhere. The area was economically depressed; the nickel mine had been laying people off for years.

They brought Taylor to the playgroup, nine o'clock Tuesday morning. All three of them accompanied her; it didn't even occur to them to think that this might be an odd arrangement until they got there and noticed the curious stares their arrival prompted.

The other kids were all accompanied by their moms, and only their moms. Also noticeable at first glance: they were all white. Most of them were blonde. Probably none of them were undercover secret agents.

Taylor wasn't bothered by any of this. As soon as they got her shoes off, she ran straight in with a squeal of delight, making a beeline for a little boy about her size who was playing with a firetruck. She grabbed the firetruck.

"Uh, no, Taytay!" Vic said, darting in after her and restoring the firetruck to its original possessor. "You have to wait your turn."

"Taytay wan tuk!" she insisted, angrily.

"Say '_I_ want the truck,'" Vic murmured, carrying her a little distance away from the worried-looking little boy. "Can you say 'I want the truck'?"

"Wan tuk," she grouched.

"Look, here's another truck," he said, handing her a toy school bus. "Play with this one."

The mom who seemed to be attached to the little boy caught Vic's eye.

"Sorry about that," Vic said with a wince.

"Don't worry about it," she smiled. "Sharing is hard. First time here?"

"Uh, yeah." Vic held out a hand. "I'm Vic. This is Taylor."

"Shannon," said the mom, shaking his hand. "And Kyle. So you're Taylor's ... dad?" On the question mark, her gaze flicked curiously over to Li Ann and Mac. They were sitting on the floor together, Li Ann leaning slightly against Mac. Mac was chatting animatedly with another of the moms, and Li Ann seemed to be listening quietly.

"They're the parents," Vic clarified. "I'm—" god damn it, they never really had come up with a good explanation for this, "—their roommate. But I'm the one with a car. We live a ways out of town."

"I see," Shannon said politely. "And what do you do?"

Ahahaha, good question. "Well, I'm looking for work," Vic admitted. Hey, maybe Shannon would know somebody who was hiring. "I'm willing to do pretty much anything."

Shannon gave him a sympathetic look. "That's rough," she said. "My husband was unemployed for six months this year. He finally got hired on as a contractor's assistant, but that's just until the regular guy recovers from a back injury. Honestly—we're thinking of moving out west to the oil sands."

* * *

Vic reported his conversation with Shannon to Mac and Li Ann, later.

"That's not encouraging," Li Ann observed.

"Well, we have to keep trying," Vic said. "What else are we going to do? We can't exactly move to Fort McMurray."

"Actually, maybe I should just stay home with Taylor tomorrow," Mac said. "You two can keep looking. Maybe you'll find something. But Taylor is getting _really_ tired of me dragging her around Sudbury all day every day. I'm spending more time looking for playgrounds than looking for work, anyway."

"Okay," Vic said, reluctantly. It was a good point, about Taylor. Vic wasn't happy about Mac giving up the job search, though. Vic privately thought that Mac was, of the three of them, probably the one with the _best_ chance of sweet-talking a stranger into giving him a job that he had no on-paper qualifications for, with no references. Maybe they shouldn't have saddled him with Taylor every day—but he was still very much her favourite, and he loved looking after her, so it had just seemed natural.

* * *

Another day, another fruitless job search. They were running out of Sudbury businesses to walk into. One of the staff members at the employment centre approached Vic as he was scanning the board there, and mentioned that she'd seen him a lot lately. Would he like to make an appointment with a job counsellor, to go over his resumé and talk about his options? Vic declined, gruffly; his complete lack of a job history would be sure to raise unanswerable questions.

They had peanut butter sandwiches for supper that night. And over supper, Mac said: "I've found a job. But you're not gonna like it."

Vic stared at him. "_You_ found a job? _How_? We left you here all day."

Mac took a bite of his sandwich. Shrugged. "I told Sonny I needed work. He said he could hook me up."

"Oh. _Oh_. No way." Vic shook his head, for emphasis. "You are not doing some kind of, of, _biker_ job."

"He wouldn't have me actually dealing," Mac said, mildly. "Probably just providing security. He's seen me training, in the backyard."

"Oh, that's better? You're going to hire out as his _thug_?"

Mac just raised an eyebrow at him. "Did _you_ find work, today?"

It was a rhetorical question, so Vic didn't answer it. "You can't do it," he insisted. "This leads _nowhere_ good. You know how these guys work. They lure you in with the easy money, and next thing you know you're neck-deep in criminal activity, with no way out but jail."

Now Li Ann and Mac were _both_ raising their eyebrows at him. "Uh, Vic?" Mac said. "Have you been drinking too much well water? Forgotten who we really are? Who _I_ really am? There's no way Sonny's going to suck me into a life of crime. That ship has _sailed_. Sailed, docked, offloaded its cargo, and now what do you know, I work for the harbourmaster. Anything we do here, we're doing as undercover agents on a mission. I technically _can't_ commit a crime."

Mac's argument was logically compelling, but Vic's gut still said _hell no_. "Maybe _you_ can't," he said, "but Macdonald Xian can. What if you get arrested?"

Mac just shrugged. "Cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Vic," Li Ann said, "how much money do we have? How long until we run out?"

Vic swallowed. He'd been a little afraid to count, lately. Looking for work was _costing_ them money—the phone hookup fees, the extra trips into Sudbury, the restaurant meals. "Uh, we'll make it to October for sure," he said. "But not to November."

She nodded. "I think that Mac should take the job."

* * *

Early the next morning, Mac disappeared in Sonny's truck. Vic and Li Ann stayed at the safe house all day, looking after Taylor and, in Vic's case, feeling nervous. Li Ann seemed unconcerned. Taylor was whiny, and asked for Daddy a lot.

One small victory: her exact words were "I want Daaaddeeeee!"

Pronouns!

Mac came home a little after seven, with a hundred dollars cash in hand. "It was fine," he said with a shrug in response to Vic's questioning. "No big deal. I stood around a lot." He handed Vic the money, and then scooped up Taylor for a big hug. She shrieked with delight.

After that, Mac started heading off on biker jobs three or four times a week—sometimes at odd hours, without much notice. The second day, he came back _riding_ a bike—a ten-year-old Yamaha in moderately decent shape. "It's just a loaner," Mac clarified. "I couldn't ask Sonny to drive me to work every day."

All in all, Mac started pulling in about three hundred to five hundred bucks a week. It wasn't _quite_ enough for them all to live on, but it was close. Considering the cash reserve they still had on hand, Vic figured that at this rate, they'd at least make it through the winter.

Vic and Li Ann kept looking for legitimate work in Sudbury—still to no avail. Li Ann mentioned that she'd be willing to work for Sonny, but it seemed that Sonny was a little old-fashioned in terms of the preferred gender of his thugs. Li Ann mentioned—out of Sonny's hearing and with an air of annoyance—that she was pretty sure that she could convince him of her job qualifications, if needed, but they collectively decided to hold that one in reserve for if their situation got more desperate. Vic, for his part, _didn't_ offer to work for Sonny, and nobody asked him to. He had a slightly uncomfortable feeling that Li Ann and Mac were humouring what they saw as one of his quirks.

They kept bringing Taylor to the playgroup, though after the first time they sent only one adult in on any given day. They all took turns, even Vic, because playgroup was _fun_ and he didn't want to be left out. The moms at the group were definitely a little bemused at Mac's involvement and even more so at Vic's, but nobody seemed to have a problem with it. In fact, after a while Vic started to get the distinct sense that some of the moms were _flirting_ with him—but it was all in good sport, and they seemed to like watching him blush.

The nights got cool; the mornings were crisp. On the days that Mac and Li Ann made it out into the yard in the morning to work out, they wore sweatpants and long sleeves. The leaves started to turn, a glorious patchwork of yellows, oranges and reds. The mosquitoes disappeared, to everyone's relief.

September ended. Still no sign of the Director. October began.


	13. Chapter 13

One night in early October, Li Ann shook Vic out of a deep sleep. "Huh, what's up?" Vic murmured, shielding his eyes from the stabbing of the overhead light.

"Something's wrong with Taylor," Li Ann said. "She won't stop crying. We think she has a fever."

Vic sat up. He could hear Taylor crying, faintly; it sounded like it was coming from the living room. "Mac's got her?"

Li Ann nodded. "We don't have a baby thermometer, do we?"

"We don't have a thermometer at all." Their first aid kit was still the one that had originally been in the trunk of Li Ann's car; they were equipped for patching up minor burns, stab wounds and bullet holes, but not a sick toddler.

Mac was sitting on the couch, holding Taylor on his lap. She was leaning against his chest, her fingers plucking desultorily at his wiry patch of chest hair as she wept; her face was red, and her own hair was stuck damply to her scalp in curly tendrils.

"Hey there, Taytay," Vic said softly, sitting down beside Mac. "How are you doing?" She didn't react to him. He reached over and put his hand on her forehead. "You're right," he said after a moment, "she feels really hot. How long has she been like this?"

"She woke up about an hour and a half ago," Mac said. "She took a little water. I think she's been getting worse."

Vic realized that both Mac and Li Ann were looking at him, wide-eyed, like he was going to be the one who knew how to fix it.

"Okay," Vic said. "I think we'd better take her to a doctor."

* * *

It was two-thirty in the morning when they set out for Sudbury. Taylor cried in her car seat the whole way there. Li Ann and Mac both sat in the back with her, doing their best to comfort her and looking very worried. Vic, responsible for the driving, tried to stay calm and fight his natural tendency to imagine worst-case scenarios. Taylor had all of her vaccinations, presumably. (Did she? They hadn't brought her to a doctor since they'd had her. Fuck, why hadn't he ever thought of bringing her to a doctor?) It probably wasn't anything serious. It couldn't be.

Nevertheless, he brought them to the ER at the regional hospital; there was nothing else open.

The triage nurse took Taylor's temperature, got Taylor to follow a light with her eyes and head, and then told them that they'd probably have to wait three or four hours to see a doctor.

So they waited.

Taylor had stopped crying when they arrived, maybe distracted by the change of scenery. In the waiting room, she soon started again—but stopped when Mac stood up with her and started pacing the room. She rested her head against his shoulder and never quite closed her eyes.

Vic and Li Ann sat, and held hands.

Taylor finally got called at seven in the morning.

"Uh, just the parents," the nurse said, apologetically, blocking Vic's path. "Thanks."

So then Vic sat by himself, and worried.

And felt vaguely resentful about being excluded.

And worried some more.

In fact, it wasn't very long before they were back. Twenty minutes, maybe. Vic stood up quickly, met them half-way. "So?" he asked.

Li Ann shrugged, looking sheepish. "She has a cold."

"_Probably_ a cold," Mac amended, brushing Taylor's hair away from her eyes. She was resting her head against his shoulder again, sucking her thumb.

"But, the fever?"

"Little kids get fevers when they have colds," Li Ann said. "Apparently. Sometimes."

"So, what do we do? Is there medicine, or...?"

Li Ann shook her head. "Just let her rest, and make sure she gets plenty of fluids. We should get a thermometer, though, and take her to a doctor if the fever doesn't go away in three days or if it suddenly gets a lot higher."

So they made a pit stop at the pharmacy, and then drove back to Key River. Mac set off on his bike almost as soon as they arrived; he'd apparently already had a job for Sonny arranged. Vic just barely managed to remind him to take his meds before he left.

Taylor fell asleep as soon as they laid her down on her bed. Vic and Li Ann both stood over her, watching her, for another five minutes or so, reassuring themselves that she was okay.

Then they went out to the living room and flopped on the couch.

"Wow," Li Ann said. "That was an experience."

Vic rubbed his neck. "Welcome to parenthood, I guess."

Li Ann looked rueful. "The doctor seemed a bit unimpressed with us for bringing her to the ER with a cold."

"Well, I'd say 'better safe than sorry', but actually I guess we did kind of overreact." Vic shrugged. "I'm almost as new to this as you guys are, you know. I only ever babysat Alice; I was never her primary caregiver. I never looked after her when she was sick."

"I didn't think we were overreacting," Li Ann said. "I've seen babies die."

Vic gave her a sharp glance. "Shit. Really?"

"When I was a kid, in China. It was a very poor area. I don't remember ever seeing a doctor." She had a thoughtful, faraway look. "I had a little brother who died."

"Jesus, Li Ann." He looked at her with concern. "You never said."

She shrugged. "I barely remember him. I would have been ... five? Six years old? I think that my parents always resented that their four daughters all survived, and their only son died."

"Li Ann..." Vic found that he was basically speechless. "Come here?"

She looked over, and saw his inviting gesture. She moved over to his end of the couch, and sank into his hug. She sighed. "Taylor's going to be okay."

"She _is_," Vic promised. "She's going to live a long, healthy, happy life. Her parents are engineers, so she'll probably ... I dunno, rebel against them and become an artist. Or a movie star. Or an athlete. Have you noticed how much better she's getting at imitating your moves when you're sparring with Mac? And I don't know if you've noticed, but she can build a block tower _ten_ blocks high now."

Li Ann closed her eyes, and smiled. "However long this lasts," she said, "I'm glad I've had the chance to get to know her."

* * *

Taylor slept until mid-afternoon, and woke up hungry, reasonably cheerful, and extremely snotty.

"Wow," Li Ann said, recoiling visibly at the sight of actual snot bubbles forming and bursting under her daughter's nostrils. "I didn't remember that that was a thing that could happen."

Vic winced, and darted in with a tissue. "Me neither! Ugh."

For the rest of the day, Vic and Li Ann took turns chasing Taylor around the house with a box of tissues.

Mac finally showed up around eight in the evening. Vic pressed a tuna fish sandwich into his hands, updated him on the Taylor situation, and then sent him straight to bed. Vic and Li Ann had napped in the morning and early afternoon; Mac basically hadn't slept since yesterday.

* * *

The next morning, Vic woke up with a sore throat.

"Thanks a _lot_," he said to Taylor, who was cheerfully patting him awake and incidentally blowing snot bubbles.

He was on the mattress in the adults' room. Mac was still asleep on the other side of the mattress, with Taylor in between them. Vic figured that meant that Mac had handled a nighttime waking and brought Taylor into the adults' bedroom afterwards; Vic had no memory of it.

Taylor had slept in longer than usual today; the sun was just starting to come up. With sunrise around seven-thirty now and Taylor's internal clock still waking her up at six, Vic had gotten used to starting his days in darkness.

Vic picked Taylor up and carried her to the kitchen before she could disturb Mac. "What would you like for breakfast?" he asked her, flicking on the lights.

"I want baNAna," Taylor chirped.

"I want banana _please_," Vic reminded her.

"Peeease," Taylor echoed obediently.

Vic provided a bowl of mushed banana, and then put on coffee. Upon reflection, deciding that he was pretty hungry, he also started on some scrambled eggs.

Li Ann, who'd been sleeping on the couch, sat up and grimaced at him. "Ugh," she said. "Something crawled down my throat and _died_."

"You too, huh?" Vic said. "Want some orange juice?"

"Uh huh," she said, not moving from the couch.

So Vic poured a glass for her, and one for himself, and brought them both over to the couch. "Cheers," he said, handing her hers.

Li Ann made a face and chinked glasses. "We were warned about this," she pointed out after she drank. "That waitress. Right after we rescued Taylor, when Mac and I were coughing from the smoke and pretending we were sick. The kid goes to playgroup, the kid gets sick, the parents get sick."

"Hm, yeah." Vic gave a rueful shrug. "The parenting book says she's building up her immune system. Fewer sick days later!"

"What about _my_ immune system?" Li Ann moaned, and face-planted dramatically against the back of the couch—being careful not to spill her juice. "I _hate_ being sick."

"I know," Vic murmured. She really did. She took it as a personal offence—a betrayal on the part of her normally-reliable body.

"I need tea," Li Ann said. "Lots of tea."

* * *

Mac got up about an hour later.

"How are you doing this morning?" Vic asked him, handing him a bowl of kept-warm scrambled eggs.

"Hm? Um, fine. I slept okay. Taylor was up for maybe half an hour in the middle of the night. I hope we didn't disturb you coming into the room."

"You didn't." Vic wrinkled his nose. Sniffled experimentally. "Li Ann and I are both definitely coming down with Taylor's cold. You're sure you're fine?"

"Yeah, absolutely." Mac's grin wavered under Vic's scrutiny. "Well, my throat's a little scratchy."

"Uh huh." Vic sighed, and then gave Mac a one-armed hug. "Okay, we're all in this together. You don't have any biker jobs lined up today, do you?"

Mac shook his head.

"Great." He kissed Mac's cheek. And then, upon reflection, kissed Mac's lips—if they were both already sick, it really didn't matter. "Let's take it easy today."

* * *

Taylor was operating at about seventy-five percent capacity. She played with her blocks and her doll, she bounced on the mattress in her room, she complained about not being allowed outdoors, and then by mid-morning she was ready for a nap.

Vic was about ready for a nap, too. Li Ann already _was_ napping, on the couch. She'd fallen asleep reading.

Mac was outside, working out on the tire punching bag. Vic had tried to veto that, but Mac had said that he felt fine (of course), and that he needed the exercise. Vic had at least convinced him to wear a jacket and a wool hat—but from the porch, now, he saw that Mac had taken them off.

He also saw Mac pause with one hand on a tire, turn aside, and then sneeze twice into the crook of his elbow.

Vic sighed, and went down across the lawn. "Hey," he said.

Mac looked up sort of guiltily, and blinked. "Hi."

Vic picked Mac's jacket and hat up off the ground and held them out to him. "You should put these back on."

"I got too hot once I was warmed up," Mac said, but he obediently took the jacket and shrugged it on, and then pulled on the hat.

"Come inside," Vic said. "It's nap time."

Mac frowned, and sniffed. "We don't have a morning nap time."

"We do when we're sick. Come on. Taylor and Li Ann are already asleep."

"I'm not really sick," Mac protested.

"Well, I am," Vic said, instead of arguing. "And I want a nap. And I want you to cuddle me. So come on."

Mac sneezed twice more on the way up to the house. Vic refrained from commenting on how sick Mac wasn't. "I'm glad you finally learned how to do that on your own," he did mention. Mac still sneezed pretty quietly, but at least he didn't compulsively stifle them anymore—and he'd gotten past the phase of needing Vic to literally hold his hands to stop him from doing that.

"Mm hm," Mac said vaguely, and sniffled.

Inside, Vic brought Mac into the adults' bedroom, and lay down with him. They left the bedroom doors both open, so that they'd hear if Taylor woke up, especially if Li Ann was still asleep. No sex today, alas.

"Sorry, wait," Mac said, and rolled away from Vic, sat up, and sneezed again.

"Yeah, you're not sick at all," Vic murmured. He looked around and saw that there was a kleenex box in the room, but it was out of reach against a wall. He went and fetched it, and handed it to Mac. "Here."

Mac sheepishly took one and blew his nose. "Maybe I'm a little sick," he admitted.

"Yeah. Come on, lie down. Keep the tissue box." Vic lay down on his back, with his left arm tucked back under the pillow and his right arm around Mac. Mac rested his head in the crook of Vic's shoulder and put the kleenex box on Vic's belly. "You know, you and Li Ann are kind of hilariously opposite," Vic observed. "She's been complaining about how sick she is all _morning_."

Mac laughed a little. "Yeah, she _hates_ being sick."

Vic rolled his eyes. "She did mention that once or twice. Also she made me drink three mugs of ginger tea."

Mac looked bemused. "You can't stand that stuff. I've never managed to get you to drink more than half a cup."

"She's very persuasive."

"She threatened to hold your nose and pour it down your throat?"

Vic suppressed a snicker. "I take it that you're familiar with her techniques."

"Yeah, well, that's how she used to give me hangover remedies when we were kids. I mean, she didn't _actually_ hold my nose. She just threatened to." Then Mac made a sudden grab for the tissue box, and failed to get there before he sneezed into Vic's armpit. "Ugh. Sorry," he muttered, and belatedly got himself a tissue.

"Don't worry about it," Vic murmured, distracted by the reference to Mac's adolescent hangovers. Which, Vic knew, had followed sessions where Michael would ply Mac with alcohol, get him to talk about his mother's death and other horrors, and then possibly fuck him. "God, your whole childhood sucked."

"Huh?" Mac frowned up at him in a puzzled way. "No, Li Ann was pretty nice to me overall."

"Yeah, I know _that_. I mean the fact that you had hangovers when you were a kid at _all_. That's not right."

"Oh." Mac kind of shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."

"I'm serious. I wish none of that had happened to you." Vic shifted position so that he was on his side facing Mac (the tissue box slid off his belly and landed between them). He traced Mac's jawline with his fingers. "_Nobody_ should have to go through that kind of stuff."

"So you understand why we couldn't run away with Taylor," Mac said.

"Hm?" Vic was momentarily thrown by the change in subject.

"I'm sorry," Mac added, giving Vic a worried look. "Back when we talked about it before, you were so attached to the idea. I know this has been kind of your dream, in some ways. The four of us playing house, being like a family. I wish we could give you that for real. But if we ran away, we'd be more like _my_ family. Me and my mom, holing up in third-world countries, meeting with drug lords and warlords. And that was always going to end the way it did. I mean, it didn't necessarily have to be Burmese government troops. But it was going to be _somebody_'s bullet. We can't do that to Taylor."

Vic wanted to protest that the three of them would _definitely_ do better by Taylor than Mac's mother had by him. But ... well, that was an insanely low bar. And Mac really had a point. Hell, look at them _now_—the only work that any of them had found was Mac working for a biker gang.

And besides, Mac and Li Ann had made their decision more than a month ago. They'd grieved, and moved on. Vic owed them the decency of not re-opening that wound.

"I do understand," Vic said, and hugged Mac. "Let's get some sleep."

* * *

In the afternoon, Vic made a solo supply run into Sudbury to get more groceries and, importantly, more tissues. A lot more tissues.

When he got back, Li Ann met him at the door. "Thank _God_," she said, taking the bags from his hands and rummaging through until she found a tissue box. "We ran out of kleenex forty-five minutes ago. We've been using toilet paper since then."

"Sorry to hear it," Vic said with a wince. Their toilet paper was the thin, scratchy, safe-for-septic-tanks kind. "Have you been sneezing a lot?"

Li Ann shook her head, while blowing her nose. "Not so much. Not like Mac. But my nose has been running like crazy. How about you?"

"Nah, I'm just a bit stuffed up. Feeling pretty tired and achy, though. I could go for another nap. Are Mac and Taylor sleeping?" They weren't in sight, and the house was quiet.

"No. She did nap again, but she got up a little while ago. She was going completely stir crazy, so Mac decided to take her out to play on the slide." She took another tissue box out of the bag and handed it to Vic. "Why don't you go around back and give this to Mac, since you've still got your shoes on? I'll put the groceries away."

So Vic went back out the front door, and then around the house to the back. Taylor was just climbing up her little slide; Mac stood watching, with a roll of toilet paper in one hand. Vic noted with approval that they were both wearing their jackets and hats.

When he got to Mac's side, Vic held out the tissue box. "I brought you a present."

"Oh, great, thanks." Mac cracked the top, pulled out a kleenex, and went over to Taylor. "C'mere, Taytay, Vic brought more of the soft ones. Let's wipe that nose."

Taylor suffered her very runny nose to be wiped, and then went back to sliding. She was taking turns with Gaga the doll.

"How are you—" Vic started to ask, but Mac interrupted him, involuntarily, by turning aside with a soft, quick _tshh! tshh! tshh!_ into his elbow. "—doing?" Vic finished. "Uh, still not great, I see."

"Gazunhi!" Taylor exclaimed.

"Li Ann taught her to say that," Mac mentioned with a slightly baleful look. "Now she says it every single time. Did you get the cold medicine?"

"Uh huh. Temper your expectations, though. That stuff the Agency gives you isn't available to civilians."

"Whatever, as long as it helps. I've got to work tomorrow."

* * *

The next day, Taylor was almost back to her usual perky, constantly-in-motion self. Vic and Li Ann were considerably less perky.

Mac had disappeared early, off on some job for Sonny (taking the whole bottle of cold medicine with him). Li Ann and Vic took turns chasing Taylor around the house, resting on the couch, and complaining companionably about how miserable they were. Li Ann made pot after pot of ginger tea and insisted that Vic drink it with her. Vic made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and chicken soup for supper.

Mac didn't even get home until nearly nine o'clock, but when he did, he handed Vic a hundred and fifty dollars. "It was a good day," he said. "And they want me back tomorrow."

"Doing what?" Vic asked, eyeing the money with a familiar mix of trepidation and relief.

"Just security," Mac said. "Why do you always ask? You really don't want to know. Anyway it's way more low-key than the usual Agency stuff. I haven't even had to _hurt_ anybody yet."

"Well, that's good," Vic said, tucking the money into the cash envelope with a grimace. "Since you're working for criminals."

Mac raised an eyebrow. "I'm working for the _Director_. Repeat after me, Vic: we are undercover secret agents."

"Uh huh," Vic said, letting it go, because basically Mac was right, and anyway Vic was feeling increasingly guilty about the fact that Mac was now single-handedly supporting their household. Especially today—Mac had to be feeling as awful as Vic and Li Ann were, and presumably his day had _not_ included ginger tea and frequent naps. "Have you eaten?"

Mac shook his head, so Vic poured a serving's-worth of chicken soup into a small saucepan and started warming it up.

"Is Li Ann putting Taylor to sleep?" Mac asked, presumably noticing the absence of both of them.

"Yeah. Actually—" Vic checked his watch, "—I would've expected her to be back out by now."

Mac shrugged, and went to check. Came back a moment later wearing an amused half-grin. "Li Ann fell asleep."

"I guess we should leave her there?" Vic said. Usually Mac was the only one who fell asleep putting Taylor to bed, but Li Ann had been pretty tired all day today.

"I left the door open so I'll hear if Taylor wakes up," Mac said.

"Hm." Vic stirred the soup. "Do you want me to take over for the night, tonight? If she wakes up. You had to work all day today, you must be tired—and you're out tomorrow, too."

"If I don't look after Taylor tonight I won't even _see_ her," Mac pointed out. "I can handle it."

"Are you sure?" Deciding the soup was warm enough, Vic poured it into a bowl and put it on the breakfast bar where Mac was standing. "How were you today? Li Ann and I were feeling pretty wiped out."

Mac shrugged. "It's just a cold. The sneezing was kind of annoying whenever the medicine started wearing off, but luckily I was on my own for most of the day. Anyway I think the worst is over."

"Do you still have the bottle on you?" Vic asked. And followed up with a stern look, until Mac handed it over. Vic checked the level of the liquid. "Ah, yeah, you definitely shouldn't have any more of this today." He tucked it into his own pocket.

"You gotta give it back to me for tomorrow, though," Mac said. "Literally my whole job is to look tough. That doesn't work so well if I'm sneezing my head off."

"Especially since you have such adorably dainty sneezes," Vic remarked with a smirk. "Anyway I thought you said the worst was over?"

"Better safe than sorry," Mac mumbled sort of vaguely, and started eating his soup.

* * *

Vic unilaterally declared an early bedtime, and Mac didn't argue, so they turned in not long after Mac finished his supper.

Vic was briefly tempted to suggest sex—it didn't have to be _energetic_ sex—but decided against it when Mac was overcome by a sneezing fit while getting undressed. Instead, he pressed a wad of fresh tissues into Mac's hand, led him to the bed, and made him sit in front of Vic so that Vic could give him a neck rub.

"Mm, that's nice," Mac murmured, letting his head sink lower to give Vic access.

"You're tense," Vic observed, digging his thumbs into the place where Mac's neck met his shoulders. "You were working hard all day to hide the fact that you're sick, weren't you."

"Well ... yeah." Mac tucked up his knees and lowered his head so it was resting on them. "I guess so."

"You don't have to do that now. You can just _be_ sick. It's much more relaxing. Li Ann and I had a lovely day, complaining to each other constantly."

Mac laughed, and it turned into a cough. "You know that doesn't really work for me," he said. "I mean, talking about being sick makes me feel really uncomfortable. You know why."

"Because you had to be a bad-ass Triad gangster for Michael," Vic said. "I know. And now you have to be a bad-ass motorcycle gangster for Sonny. But you don't have to be any of those things in _here_."

"I know," Mac said. And then he added a bit sheepishly, "I actually kind of like it when you fuss over me. Even though I hate talking about it."

"Oh yeah?" Vic kissed the back of his neck, and then tugged at Mac's shoulders a bit to get him to sit up straight. He reached around to press a hand against Mac's forehead; left it there for a moment. "I don't think you have a fever," he said.

Mac leaned his head back against Vic's shoulder. "Seriously, it's just a cold."

"Hey, you just admitted that you enjoy my fussing," Vic smirked. "Just you wait—I'm gonna wake up tomorrow in time to tell you to put on a scarf." He kissed Mac's temple. "Let's go to sleep. You really do need the rest."

* * *

Sometime in the middle of the night, Vic woke to the feeling of Mac climbing off the mattress, and the sound of Taylor crying in the other room. Remembering that Mac had said he would take care of any nighttime wakings as usual, Vic didn't open his eyes, but sort of drifted along half-asleep, listening to the subsequent sounds. Taylor's cries changed in pitch about half a minute later. And then someone came into the adults' bedroom and climbed onto the other side of the mattress, coughing. Li Ann. "Oh hey," Vic mumbled.

"Is it okay if I crash here now?" Li Ann asked. "I think Mac's taking Taylor out into the living room to walk around."

"Sure, no problem."

Li Ann coughed some more, and then got quiet. It sounded like she'd gone back to sleep.

Vic, on the other hand, found that he was feeling increasingly awake. He continued lying there with his eyes closed for a while, waiting for sleep to overtake him again, but it didn't. He could hear Taylor crying in the living room for a while, and then eventually she stopped, but then he could hear Mac coughing.

Vic decided to go out and check on them, since he was awake anyway.

Mac was sitting on the couch with Taylor curled up on his lap, leaning against his shoulder. He had _The Little Mermaid_ running in the VCR, with the sound down very low. The living/dining room lights were off, but the kitchen lights were on.

"Hi," Vic whispered, sitting down next to Mac.

"What are you doing up?" Mac whispered back.

"Checking on you. I heard you coughing."

"Oh. Well, since you're up," Mac whispered, "could you do me a favour? Could you get my blue inhaler out of the pocket of the pants I was wearing yesterday and bring it to me?"

"Oh shit, do you feel like you're going to have an attack?" Vic asked, already standing up. "Where are the pants?"

"On the floor of the bedroom somewhere," Mac said. "And no, no attack, my chest just feels a little tight."

Nevertheless, Vic hurried back to the bedroom to find Mac's pants. He brought the inhaler straight back out to Mac, and watched with some concern as Mac immediately used it.

"It's okay," Mac said, catching Vic's worried look. "That'll make it better, that's what it's _for_."

"Maybe I should take Taylor and let you go back to bed," Vic offered.

Mac shook his head. "She's _almost_ asleep again. Let's not disturb her."

Vic decided not to argue about that—but he also decided to stay with Mac. He sat down again, slung an arm across the couch behind Mac's shoulders, and whispered "This song gets stuck in my head something crazy." _Under the Sea_ featuring Sebastian the crab. Such an ear-worm.

"Me too," Mac whispered back. "I miss _our_ music collections."

"Was that a first-person-_plural_ that I heard?" Vic asked. "As in, mine as well as yours?"

"Muddy Waters was growing on me," Mac said with a soft grin. "Damn it, if we're going to be stuck here all _year_, we should get some music."

"We don't have a stereo," Vic reminded him. "Or any spare money."

"I'm making money," Mac whispered. "We should have _some_ fun."

Vic agreed, up to a point. But paying for food, gas and medicine came first, and what Mac was earning wasn't quite covering all of that. "Maybe if we check in at the Salvation Army shop," he suggested, "we could find a second-hand stereo for cheap. If we're lucky."

"That could work," Mac agreed, looking hopeful.

"Hey, I think Taylor's asleep," Vic said. Her thumb had fallen out of her mouth, and her eyes hadn't opened. "Let's get you both to bed."


	14. Chapter 14

The next day, Vic felt a lot better. Taylor was entirely back to normal. But Li Ann felt worse. She was coughing a lot, and complained that she was tired, and that her chest felt tight. Vic took over all the childcare and housework responsibilities, and let Li Ann spend the day alternately napping on the couch and watching their one grainy TV channel. She went to bed before Taylor did that night—flopped on the mattress in the adults' bedroom.

Mac came home while Vic was putting Taylor to bed; he was rummaging in the fridge for leftovers when Vic emerged from Taylor's room. He came up with a plate of cold roast beef.

"Hey, how was your day?" Vic asked.

Mac shrugged. "Quiet again. You?"

"Also quiet. Taylor's back to her usual self. Li Ann was feeling pretty rough, though. She went to bed early." Vic gave Mac a careful look. "How are you feeling?"

"Fi—" Mac started to say, but then caught Vic's eye. "Ah, actually I'm pretty tired. Would you be willing to look after Taylor tonight?"

"Yeah, of course," Vic said. He went over and gave Mac a gentle hug, and a peck on the cheek. Then he felt his forehead—accepting Mac's eye-roll as par for the course. "Huh, you feel a little warm."

Mac shrugged.

Vic didn't say anything else, but he went to the bathroom and came back with a thermometer. Mac was just finishing his cold cuts when Vic returned.

"I don't have a fever," Mac said, eyeing the thermometer. "I'm just tired. I was on my feet basically all day."

"Well, you admitted yesterday that you secretly like it when I fuss over you," Vic reminded him. "So you gotta realize that there's _nothing_ you can say to stop me now." He took Mac by the hand and led him over to the couch, then tucked the thermometer under his tongue. While they waited for the reading, Vic rubbed Mac's shoulders. "Are you working again tomorrow?" he asked.

Mac nodded.

"Oof. You should probably go to bed as soon as we're done here." He kneaded his thumbs into the muscles at the top of Mac's back, and enjoyed the soft contented sigh than Mac made. "You know, I never actually said—thanks. For taking the jobs from Sonny, for looking after us. If it weren't for you, we would've run out of money by now. We would've been totally screwed." Vic had originally thought that they'd make it to mid-November, but new expenses kept cropping up that he hadn't even expected. Warmer clothes as the weather turned. A surprise $400 bill for auto insurance showing up in the mail—apparently only the first four months of insurance had been pre-paid by whoever bought them the car in Vic's name. "I know I've given you some grief over working for criminals, but you were right. Our mission is to protect Taylor. We need money to do that. You found a way to get some. Thank you."

Mac kind of smiled around the thermometer, and shrugged.

Vic checked his watch, and then plucked out the thermometer. Frowned at it. "You actually do have a fever. Just a low one, but ... shit. You should definitely go to bed now." He gave Mac a quick hug. "Why don't you go sleep in the adults' room with Li Ann, and I'll sleep in with Taylor. That way I'll catch her as soon as she wakes up, before she can wake you up." Hopefully Taylor would be willing to accept Vic's middle-of-the-night care. Or, even if she wasn't, hopefully she wouldn't wake Mac up from across the hall and through two closed bedroom doors.

"For the record," Mac said, standing up, "I thought it was sweet that you were worried about me working for bikers. Weirdly naïve ... but sweet." He ruffled Vic's hair affectionately, and headed off to bed.

* * *

As it happened, Taylor didn't wake up that night. She did get up at six in the morning, but she had no problem with Vic giving her morning cuddles and breakfast.

About quarter to seven, Mac emerged from the adults' bedroom. He gave Vic a sleepy wave and disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later, Vic heard the shower starting up.

Then Li Ann came out into the living room.

"Hey, how are you doing?" Vic asked.

She grimaced. "Crappy. But we have another problem. When we woke up this morning, Mac asked for a hit off my rescue inhaler."

"Huh?" Vic frowned. "He can't find his?"

"No, it's empty."

"Oh, shit. I guess I'd better head into Sudbury for a refill, then."

"True," Li Ann said. "But the other thing is—if his is _empty_, that means he's been using it a _lot_. Vic, we have to talk him out of going to work today. I think he's sicker than I am."

Vic looked at her warily. "How sick are _you_?"

She made a frustrated noise. "My chest hurts. I'm coughing a lot. I just want to sleep."

"That doesn't sound good," Vic said. In the background, he could hear Mac coughing over the sound of the shower. "Okay, I'll talk to him."

Li Ann settled on the couch after that, and read a book to Taylor. Vic hovered in the kitchen. When Mac came out of the bathroom, freshly shaved and wearing a towel, Vic intercepted him. "Hey," he said. "Li Ann told me you're not doing so well. I don't think you should work today."

Mac gave him a weary look. "I can't just not show up for work," he said. "We need this. We need the money."

He did _not_, Vic noticed, try to insist that he felt fine.

And unfortunately he was right about how badly they needed the money. If Mac blew off work on no notice for a sick day, would Sonny stop calling on him?

Vic took a long hard look at Mac. _Could_ he make it through the day? Supposedly it was just a cold. Taylor was fine now. _Vic_ was basically fine.

But Li Ann was definitely not fine, and she and Mac had something in common: the smoke inhalation damage. They still didn't really know how bad that was. Vic had been pinning his hopes on a proper assessment and treatment by an Agency doctor once the Director finally pulled them in. Now he was starting to develop an uneasy suspicion that the lung damage was causing the colds to hit Mac and Li Ann a lot harder than him and Taylor.

"Let me check something," he said to Mac, and went over to him so he could feel his forehead. Mac made an aborted move as though to get away, but didn't complete it. "I think you're warmer than last night." Vic gave Mac a worried look. "Can I take your temperature?"

Mac sighed. "You don't need to. I definitely have a fever. Today is gonna _suck_. But seriously, Vic, I don't have a choice. I've got to work."

"There is one other choice," Vic realized suddenly. "I could go in for you."

Mac looked surprised, then a bit doubtful. "Are you sure?"

"_Yes_. Have you been doing anything that I couldn't do?"

"Not even remotely." Mac gave a slightly sheepish grin. "I told you, it's pretty much all standing around and looking like you _could_ kick ass if you had to. You can't just show up in my place, though—somebody might panic and shoot you. We'd better go over and talk to Sonny, get him to okay it."

"Hey, guys," Li Ann said from the couch, "if Vic goes to work for Sonny today, who's going to drive into Sudbury and refill Mac's prescription? And who's going to look after Taylor?"

"I can drive to Sudbury," Mac said. "Just let me have another hit from your inhaler before I go. And you can handle Taylor while I'm gone. Just ... I dunno. Put on a video. Lie down and let her climb on you."

All in all, this was a fairly worrying plan. But Vic didn't have a better one.

So Vic quickly showered and shaved while Mac got dressed, and then they headed next door to check in with Sonny.

Sonny answered the door wearing nothing but boxer shorts—which was a sight that Vic hadn't really needed to see.

Mac quickly explained the situation in broad strokes. He broke down into a rattling coughing fit halfway through, which definitely lent the story some urgent authenticity.

"You really think Vic is up for it?" Sonny asked Mac, once Mac had got to the point. Sonny looked pretty skeptical, which honestly made Vic feel a little offended.

"Up for what, exactly?" he asked anyway. Mac still hadn't _told_ him what it was that he'd been planning to do today.

"Guarding the pot field," Mac said.

"It's the last day," Sonny mentioned. "They're calling for a hard frost tomorrow. Sarah and Buffy are gonna head over in the afternoon to harvest the rest of the plants."

"Oh hey," Mac said. "In that case—do you think one of them could bring Vic home afterwards? I've gotta go up to Sudbury and I'd rather take the car than the bike. I could drop Vic off at the field on the way there. He'd never find it on his own in the dark, anyway."

Sonny frowned. "What the hell are you driving up to Sudbury for? Thought you were sick."

"I need to pick up some medicine."

"I got half a bottle of Jack Daniels in the cupboard if you want it," Sonny offered with a gap-toothed grin.

"Yeah, not _that_ kind of medicine," Mac said. "My inhaler's empty." Then he turned away and tried to muffle another coughing fit—halfway through which he braced a hand against the door frame, apparently for support, which Vic found worrying.

"Fucking hell," Sonny said. "You sound like death warmed over, kid. Tell you what—how about I drive Vic up to the field in my truck, drop him off, and head on up to Sudbury myself? I can pick up your prescription for you if you call ahead and tell them to give it to me. I got some other things to buy in town anyway."

"You'd do that?" Vic asked with surprise.

Sonny grinned again. "Sure. We're neighbours, ain't we?"

* * *

So Mac, looking fairly relieved, headed back to the safe house. Vic waited in Sonny's vestibule while Sonny pulled on some clothes, and then they headed out to the truck together.

Sonny lit up a cigarette as soon as they'd pulled out of the driveway. Vic counted himself lucky it wasn't a joint, and ignored the ghostly pangs of nicotine-craving that the smell set off in him. Quitting smoking had been the accidental gift of his six months in prison, and he'd never been tempted to take it up again.

"Don't worry, I don't smoke when I've got Mac in the truck," Sonny said.

Vic turned to look at him. "Huh?"

"On account of his asthma." Sonny rolled the driver's-side window down a quarter of the way, and took another drag on the cigarette. "My second ex-wife had that. Sherry. Couldn't abide my smoking around her at _all_. I had to go outdoors, even when it was freeze-your-balls-off cold in the middle of February." He laughed. "I'm not saying that's the _reason_ we split, but it sure didn't help."

Vic wondered if Mac had gone ahead and told Sonny that he had asthma, or if Sonny had just drawn his own conclusions from the attack he'd witnessed back in July. Come to think of it ... _did_ Mac have asthma now? Technically? "Uh, thanks," Vic said. "That's considerate of you."

Sonny gave a casual shrug. "Colds used to hit her pretty hard, too," he mentioned. "Half the time she'd end up with pneumonia."

"Oh," Vic said, faintly. "Yeah?"

"For real," Sonny nodded, and sucked on his cigarette again. Blew the smoke out towards the window. "You'd better keep an eye out for that. I told Mac _yesterday_ he sounded like hell, he should take a day off—but he said he needed the money."

Vic just raised an eyebrow. "Huh."

"Probably for the best that you're stepping in for him today," Sonny mused. "I don't think that kid's as tough as he thinks he is."

Vic blinked. And suddenly felt the need to defend Mac's honour. "Uh ... he is actually pretty tough."

Sonny shrugged. Smirked. Steered one-handed, smoking. "He told me the truth about you, by the way," he said.

A jolt of adrenaline hit Vic; he found himself sitting up very straight, suddenly, without having intended to. "Did he?" he managed to not quite squeak. "Meaning what?"

"About how you're fags," Sonny said, without rancour. Then snorted. "Excuse me. 'Lovers'."

"Oh." Vic sank back against the seat, feeling a dizzying mix of relief and continued unease. Out of the many things that Mac might have told Sonny (true or not) which Sonny might have described as 'the truth about you,' that one was ... yeah, maybe halfway up, in terms of its _what the hell, Mac?_ rating. "He, uh, mentioned that. Did he." There didn't seem to be any point in denying it; and Sonny wasn't freaking out. Vic wondered, though, exactly _what_ Mac had told Sonny—and why.

"I don't mind," Sonny added, with an air of generosity. "I figure what you get up to between the sheets is nobody's business but your own. Well, and Li Ann's, I guess, but if she don't mind sharing, who am I to judge? My third wife, Lorraine, was like that. Didn't care how many mistresses I had on the side. Said it took the pressure off of her. She'd invite them to stay over for dinner!" He guffawed. "All of you moving in together, though—that's a whole other level. How's that working out for you?"

There was a longish pause, and Vic belatedly realized that it hadn't been a rhetorical question. "Um, pretty good," he said cautiously—and vaguely.

Sonny took a last drag on his cigarette butt and crushed it into the car's ash tray. "I could see some advantages to that kind of arrangement," he mentioned. "You wouldn't get so bored like I used to, just looking at that same one face across the dinner table every night. I bet the three of you have some hell-raising arguments, though! Or maybe that works out _better_ with three. You got your tiebreaker built in—no stalemates."

"I guess so." Funny thing was, Vic had never really _thought_ about how they worked as a household before. They'd fallen into it so abruptly and accidentally, and it was only a mission.

Except—well, that wasn't exactly true, was it? In the six months _before_ this mission, Mac had effectively moved into Vic's apartment, sleeping there nearly every night, and Li Ann had usually stayed over two or three nights a week as well. They'd been developing routines, getting comfortable tripping over each other—maybe they _had_ been halfway to being a household.

It had still been _Vic's_ apartment, though. Mac and Li Ann had only been visiting; they had their own places. It was different in the safe house, where they all belonged equally.

Huh. That was a thought. What if, when this mission ended, they got a _new_ place? Together? If they pooled their resources—oh God they would have _resources_ again, that was something to look forward to—they could get a pretty reasonably-sized place, even in Toronto proper.

Vic thought that Mac would probably go for it. Not so sure about Li Ann—she'd always liked having her own place to retreat to. But in the safe house she was stuck with them, and it hadn't driven her mad yet. If the three of them got a place together in the city, she could definitely have her own bedroom, which would be a great improvement over their current situation. She just might agree to that.

"I had a girlfriend once, wanted to give it to me up the ass," Sonny was saying. The fact that Vic had gone quiet hadn't had any real effect on the conversation. "She had this big purple dong in her bedside table. Used to pull it out, wave it around, say 'hey honey, wanna see heaven tonight?'. Shee-it. I never agreed to that, no sirree-bob."

"Mm hm," Vic murmured, flexing his fingers on his knees. He was still thinking about setting up house with Mac and Li Ann, for real.

Running away with Taylor had been a terrible idea. He saw that now. Thank God Li Ann and Mac had had more sense than him, about that.

But even without a kid, they could still be a family.

* * *

Eventually they turned off the highway, followed a gravel road for a while, then a dirt road. False dawn was just turning into true dawn when Sonny pulled to a stop in the middle of the woods. "Here we are," he said.

Vic looked out the window of the truck and saw a chain link fence—and beyond it, a series of strange, lumpy grey mounds.

Sonny was already hopping out of the truck, so Vic followed suit. Then Sonny leaned back into the truck and reached under the seats; pulled out a double-barrelled shotgun. Brought it over and handed it to Vic. "You ever use one of these before?"

"Uh, no," Vic lied, giving the gun what he hoped was a convincingly intimidated look-over.

"That's fine," Sonny said. "I'll tell you the same thing I told Mac—it's really just there for the threat. But if you _do_ need to shoot it, here's what you do—" and he quickly explained its operation. "Still though. Don't shoot anything. Especially if that bear comes by. Don't shoot her."

"Uh, _bear_?" Vic repeated, this time not needing to pretend to be intimidated.

Sonny nodded. "Just get yourself inside the fence and wait till she's gone. And for God's sake don't feed her. You didn't bring any food, did you? Good. So once the temp gets up to about eight degrees, you can take the tarps off the plants. They're not going back on, so just stack'em in a pile here by the gate. Keep that gate padlocked, by the way—the deer'll get in and eat everything if you give'em an opening. Buffy and Sarah'll be here this afternoon to cut the plants. They'll drive you back home—I'll tell'em to. They'll have your money for you. Have a nice day!"

With that, Sonny was off.

* * *

The day, in the end, was uneventful.

In fact, it was _pleasant_. It was a sunny day, and warm enough to be comfortable. Peaceful. A nice day to spend in the woods. The bear didn't show up; Buffy and Sarah eventually did, with a truck, before Vic had time to start worrying about having been abandoned in the Northern Ontario wilderness. The two women cut the plants and packed them carefully in the back of the truck, and then packed Vic into the front bench seat between them. They popped a Creedence Clearwater Revival tape in the stereo for the trip home and blasted it, singing along at the top of their lungs. They dropped Vic off on his doorstep a little after six; they gave him $130, and took the shotgun.

Vic let himself in—and then froze in the doorway, taking in the fact that Sonny was sitting on the couch, reading _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ to Taylor.

Mac and Li Ann were not in sight.

"Uh, hi," Vic said, coming the rest of the way in. Taking a cautious look around. Nothing seemed out of place, other than the fact that all of Taylor's toys were scattered around the living room floor. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking after the little princess," Sonny said, grinning his yellow grin. "Yer, uh, husband and wife are in the bedroom. When I got back here with the medicine, I could see they were both sick like dogs. No way were they going to be able to keep up with this little terror all day. I told them to go sleep it off."

Vic fought down his automatic panic response—Taylor was right there, safe and whole, and currently starting to get annoyed with Sonny for the fact that he'd stopped reading to her. "Catapiya eat cake!" she urged, slapping the book.

"So you were here all day? You made lunch and everything?" He very deliberately did _not_ glance towards the high kitchen cupboards, where they kept the guns.

Sonny shrugged. "Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Taytay helped. And she ate one all by herself, didn't she!" That last sentence was directed at Taylor in a gruff singsong. Taylor giggled.

"Wow. Um, thanks. Seriously. I can take it from here."

Sonny stood up and stretched. "All right then. You tell Mac to let me know when he's ready to work again. Hope they feel better soon."

Once Sonny was gone and the door was locked behind him, Vic drew the curtains over the living and dining room windows, and then checked the guns. Nothing seemed to be out of place, and their (dwindling) envelope of cash was undisturbed. Okay. Sonny probably hadn't had any reason to go looking through the high cupboards.

Then he checked on Mac and Li Ann. They were lying on the mattress in the adults' bedroom. Mac was still in the clothes that he'd put on that morning; Li Ann was wearing the underwear and t-shirt that she'd slept in last night. Vic noticed glasses of water and plates with partly-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the floor at each side of the bed.

Li Ann stirred at Vic's arrival, and sat up. She gave him a wave of greeting, and then started coughing. She fumbled around in the sheets between herself and Mac, came up with a blue inhaler, and took a dose.

Taylor, meanwhile, had trailed Vic into the room. She climbed onto the mattress and headed for Li Ann. "Mommy wanna pway?" she asked, settling onto Li Ann's lap and patting her cheek.

"Mommy's sick, Taytay. She can't play," Vic said. He sat down on the edge of the mattress, next to Li Ann, and drew Taylor over into his own lap. "Hey," he added, to Li Ann. "How are you doing?"

She shook her head. "Not good. I slept all day, and I feel worse than I did this morning. Is Sonny gone?"

"Yeah, he just left." Vic suppressed the urge to ask what the hell Li Ann and Mac had been thinking, leaving their motorcycle-gangster neighbour in charge of their kid all day. They both looked quite alarmingly sick. Sonny had done them a solid favour, coming in and taking over the childcare so that they could rest. "How's Mac?"

Li Ann shrugged. "I haven't seen him awake since noon." She coughed again. "Vic ... I think I need to see a doctor. I'm sorry, I know it still might be dangerous—but my chest hurts when I breathe. The inhaler's barely helping. I'm actually getting kind of scared."

"Oh, Jesus." Vic took her hand and squeezed it. "Okay. Never mind the Chinese commandos. If you're scared, it's definitely serious. I'm going to take you to the ER in Sudbury. Now. Do you need anything before we go?"

"Just pants." She laboriously stood up—Vic gave her a hand—and shuffled over towards the closet.

Vic, meanwhile, shook Mac's shoulder. "Wake up, Mac. We're going to Sudbury." Now that he was closer to Mac—touching him—he noticed that Mac's breathing was rapid and shallow. Oh, this was not good. "Mac, wake up?"

Mac's eyes slitted open. "Vic?"

"Yeah. I'm taking you and Li Ann to the hospital. So you've got to get up now."

"Um, too tired," Mac kind of mumbled, and closed his eyes again. He was shivering. "You go. I just wanna sleep."

"You can sleep in the car, Mac. You have to get up now." Vic shook his shoulder again.

Mac didn't respond.

"Oh, shit," Vic said, with feeling. "Li Ann? Was he like this before?"

Li Ann looked over, frowning. "No, at lunch time he sat up and ate a bit of the sandwich."

Vic tried to set aside a slowly-growing feeling of panic. "Li Ann, are you up for going into the other room to pick up Taylor's diaper bag? I think I'm gonna have to help Mac to the car."

She nodded, and coughed.

"Taylor, go with Mommy," Vic said, setting her on her feet and nudging her towards Li Ann. Taylor took Li Ann's hand and let herself be led out of the room.

"Okay, Mac, can you sit up?" Vic asked. "Sit up for me?" He got his hands under Mac's shoulders and tugged him into a sitting position. Mac opened his eyes again, squinting at Vic in apparent confusion.

"What's going on?" he murmured.

"We're going to the car," Vic said. "I'm going to help you."

Mac shook his head. "Can't do it," he whispered, sagging against Vic. He started coughing.

Li Ann came back, holding the diaper bag and trailing Taylor, in time to see Vic lowering Mac back to the mattress. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"I don't think he can walk at all." Vic pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead, thinking frantically. "I could carry him out to the car. But I think we're better off calling an ambulance."

"Won't they have to come all the way from Sudbury?" Li Ann asked.

"Yeah, but they can get here faster than we can get there. And as soon as they get here, they can help."

Li Ann looked at Mac, and bit her lip. She nodded. "Do it."

* * *

The dispatcher told Vic to expect the ambulance in about forty-five minutes, and to keep the patient comfortable in the meantime, propped up to make breathing easier if possible. Vic pushed the mattress against the wall, piled all four of their pillows up, and got Mac to lean against them. Li Ann sat next to him, leaning against the wall, and held his hand.

And then Vic made supper. They had forty-five minutes, and Taylor was hungry.

Spaghetti was easy to make. With canned sauce, it was even easier.

He still nearly screwed it up. When the water started boiling, he poured it out over the strainer. Then realized that he hadn't even put the pasta _in_ yet, let alone cooked it.

He put on more water, and set the box of spaghetti beside the stove.

Glanced towards the living room; Taylor was playing with Gaga in front of the TV, with _The Little Mermaid_ on in the background.

He went to check on Mac and Li Ann again.

Li Ann was leaning against the pillows now, too; she had an arm around Mac, and his head was resting against hers. His eyes were closed; hers were open, and worried. "How much longer?" she asked.

"Another thirty minutes, if they get here when they said they would. How are you doing?"

"About the same," Li Ann said. "But Mac's been confused. He asked where Michael was."

"Oh, fuck." Vic sat on the edge of the mattress, and picked up Mac's hand. It was limp; his palm was clammy. "Mac, can you hear me?"

"Mmm," Mac mumbled vaguely. Then, "Vic?" without opening his eyes.

"Yeah. It's me. You've gotta keep breathing and hang in there, okay? Help's on the way."

Mac coughed weakly, and then whispered: "Vic, there are some wolves here."

Li Ann looked alarmed. "That's a new one."

"He's not hallucinating," Vic clarified quickly. "They're metaphor-wolves. Metaphor-wolves that he probably should have mentioned this _morning_," he added a bit pointedly.

"It was only one wolf this morning," Mac whispered. "Two at most."

"Vic," Li Ann said, "we're going to have to tell them about the smoke inhalation. I'm going to say that Mac and I were in an apartment fire in Vancouver. In late May."

"Got it," Vic said. "Mac, have you got that?"

Mac said something, but Vic couldn't understand it.

Li Ann bit her lip. "Ah, he just asked for Michael again."

"_Asked_ for Michael?" Vic stared at her. "As in—he _wants_ him here? What the hell?"

She shrugged. "He's sick. He's disoriented, he's scared. Michael was his anchor for a long time."

"That's..." Vic sighed, and didn't both to finish the sentence. Fucked up? Yes. But Michael was dead, and his hold on Mac was diminishing with time, Vic was confident.

He went to finish making the spaghetti.

* * *

Finally help arrived, in the form of two burly, cheerful paramedics. They bundled Mac quickly into the ambulance, and took Li Ann as the ride-along. Vic followed with Taylor in the car.

At the hospital, Vic had to park, and when he got inside there was no sign of Mac or Li Ann. The receptionist checked the records for him, and determined that Mac had been triaged straight into treatment; Li Ann had presumably gone in with him.

Vic might have been allowed to go in after them if he'd been on his own, but with Taylor he definitely couldn't. So he ended up walking the hospital hallways with her, past the gift shop and the cafeteria, back and forth, checking in at the ER reception every time he completed a circuit. It got so that the receptionist would give him a hand sign as soon as she saw him: sorry, no news yet.

Taylor got bored and cranky. She wanted Daddy; she wanted Mommy. She cried for a while and then got over it and wanted to run around, and then cried again because Vic held her to a walk. Eventually she let Vic pick her up and rest her against his shoulder; twice more up and down the full length of the corridor, and she fell asleep.

This time when Vic got within eyesight of the ER receptionist, she waved and pointed—at Li Ann.

Li Ann was sitting in the waiting area. She gave Vic a weak smile when she saw him. He hurried over to her side. "What's going on?" he whispered, mindful of Taylor asleep on his shoulder. "Where's Mac?"

"He's been admitted," Li Ann said—not whispering, but speaking softly. "He's up in the ICU."

"Shit," Vic said, although actually that wasn't any kind of surprise, considering the state Mac had been in the last time Vic saw him. "And what about you? Did you get to see a doctor yet?"

She gave a kind of sheepish grin. "I guess I jumped the queue. When the doctor examining Mac saw that we were _both_ sick, she checked me out too. I have pneumonia, but not as bad as him. I've got antibiotics now, and a follow-up appointment next week."

"So ... you're not being admitted?"

She shook her head. "Home, and rest. But you should go up and see Mac before we leave. He was asking for you."

Vic really wanted to. But— "I can't bring Taylor up there. They don't allow little kids in the ICU." The receptionist had already warned him about this.

"It's okay. I'll wait down here with her."

"Li Ann, you have pneumonia. What if she wakes up?"

"I'll be okay," she insisted. "Just don't take too long."

"Will they even let me in?" Vic asked. "You're his wife. I'm just the roommate."

"I _told_ them you were coming up," Li Ann said. "Stop worrying. Just go."

* * *

The staff up in the ICU was indeed expecting Vic. He had to put on a mask, gown and gloves before he was allowed into Mac's room, but nobody questioned his right to be there.

Mac had also been changed into a hospital gown. He was hooked up to an IV, oxygen, and monitors. He looked pale and sick, though maybe actually a little better than he'd looked while they were waiting for the ambulance. Vic needed to pause in the doorway for a moment to compose himself before he went over.

"Hey, are you awake?" he whispered when he got to the bed. If Mac was asleep, he didn't want to wake him up.

Mac opened his eyes. "You came," he murmured. He managed a very faint shadow of his usual grin. "Your mask has flowers on it. Pretty dorky."

The paper mask did, indeed, have a decorative floral print for some reason. Vic smiled behind the mask, and hoped it reached his eyes. "Mac, that was very fucking scary. Don't do that to me again, okay?" He took Mac's hand—the one that didn't have the IV tube—and squeezed it gently.

"Sorry," Mac said. "I really didn't think it was that bad."

"You're an idiot." Vic sniffled behind his mask. "I _love_ you, by the way."

"Uh huh." Mac sort of shuddered. "I love you too. How long can you stay?"

"Only a couple of minutes. I left Li Ann watching Taylor downstairs."

Mac frowned. "Shouldn't she be home in bed?"

"Well, yeah. Exactly."

"Oh, fuck." Mac looked suddenly dismayed. "She can't even get home without you. You have to go."

"I do," Vic agreed. The logistics were really just sinking in. "I'm not even sure when I'm going to be able to come back." Li Ann was too sick to look after Taylor on her own back at the safe house, and Taylor wasn't allowed into the ICU.

"Fuck," Mac breathed again. "Vic ... I'm scared. I wish you could stay. I've been getting mixed up, thinking I see Michael—I think I'm going to have nightmares, I don't know what they'll do to me here, what if they put me in the psych ward?"

"Oh, Jesus." Vic suppressed a groan. He hadn't even _thought_ about that. "Okay, try not to freak out about it. You've been running a fever, that's why you've been confused. They've got you on all sorts of nice drugs now, so that's probably going to get better pretty soon. But I'll tell the staff about the PTSD, okay? So that if you do have a nightmare, they know what's going on." He'd have to tell them about the Zoloft prescription, too, he realized.

"Okay." Still looking painfully vulnerable, Mac let go of Vic's hand and sort of weakly batted it away. "Go. Li Ann and Taylor need you."

They did—but so did Mac. Vic desperately wished he could be in two places at once.

* * *

Out at the nurse's station, Vic stripped off his mask, gown and gloves, and put them in the designated bins. He wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject of Mac's mental health problems, or who he should be talking to about that. "Who's responsible for Macdonald Xian?" he asked the woman at the desk—Jenny, according to her ID badge. "I need to tell somebody about some, um, stuff from his medical history."

"I can take that down," Jenny said. "You're the boyfriend, right?"

Vic blinked in confusion. "Come again?"

"Vic?" she said.

"Y-yes," he confirmed.

"The boyfriend," Jenny repeated, in a tone of satisfied confirmation. "Don't worry, Li Ann—the wife?—she already explained the whole thing to us. Legally, if anything came up—God forbid—she'd have to sign off on the decisions, but we've put a note in his file that you're his primary partner. I have a gay cousin," she added, helpfully. "He lives in Toronto."

"Uh huh?" Vic said, feeling a little deer-in-the-headlights. "Good for him."

It was like Sonny, all over again. While Vic had been feeling quietly alienated by Mac and Li Ann's (supposedly) legal marriage and his own this-is-Vic-who-lives-with-us status, Mac and Li Ann had apparently decided to start _coming out_ to all of Northern Ontario.

Claiming Vic as part of their family.

Wow.

"So you said something about his medical history?" Jenny prompted.

"Right." Vic pulled his focus back to the current crisis.

He explained the PTSD, going very light on the biographical details but emphasizing the night terrors, and drawing particular attention to the fact that Mac occasionally lashed out violently while in the process of waking up (which seemed like it would be a bad thing for the staff to find out by accident). Regarding the antidepressant prescription, Jenny told Vic that he should bring Mac's medication in the next morning, and Vic found himself agreeing. Even though he had no idea how he would get it here.

_Maybe Sonny could do it._

Yup, that was the level of desperation that Vic was at, now. Making plans to call on his drug-dealing biker neighbour for help.

* * *

Vic made it back to the hospital by nine in the morning.

Mac opened his eyes when Vic came into the room, and then smiled. "Oh hey," he said. "You came after all. Where are Li Ann and Taylor?"

"At home," Vic told him. "Sonny came over to look after them." It had been Li Ann's idea to ask him. Also Li Ann's idea to hide their guns in the attic, to resolve Vic's most concrete objection. Vic hadn't even known they _had_ an attic; it was accessible via a trap door in the ceiling of Taylor's closet.

"Oh, that's nice of him," Mac said.

It really was. Circumstances were forcing Vic to feel a lot of gratitude towards Sonny, and that wasn't a very comfortable feeling. "He's a generous guy," Vic admitted.

And then he was distracted, because he suddenly noticed that Mac's _hands_ were restrained—they were attached to the bed rails by sturdy velcro cuffs around his wrists. "Oh my God," Vic murmured, touching the closer one. "Mac, I'm so sorry."

"Huh?" Mac looked confused. "About what?"

"I told the nurse out there yesterday that you sometimes strike out when you're waking up from the nightmares. I didn't think they'd _cuff_ you."

"Oh," Mac said. "Right. Uh, they didn't. At first. But then I sort of did have a nightmare and punch an orderly. And fall out of bed. And sprain my wrist. And try to run away. I think I made it as far as the elevators, actually."

"Oh my _God_," Vic murmured, staring at him.

Mac gave a tiny sheepish shrug. "So it's probably good that you did warn them, at least. Hey, do you think this is one of the reasons the Agency has its own facilities?"

"_Fuck_, Mac. Are you okay? Other than the wrist?" He noticed now that Mac's left wrist was wrapped up.

"I guess so. They gave me something to calm me down."

Vic gave him a sharp look. "You mean like a sedative?"

Mac shrugged again and closed his eyes. "Everything's nice and soft now. I'm tired, though. Can you stay with me while I sleep this time?"

"Yes, I will," Vic promised. He was cleared for the whole day; Sonny had said not to even worry about it. "But first I'm going to have to go out there and let the nurse know about your history with drugs."

"Oh," Mac kind of groaned. "Really?"

"Really." He leaned in and kissed Mac's temple—actually just bumped his face mask against it, but it was the thought that counted. "If they're giving you stuff, they should know."

"Shit." Mac sighed. "Okay. But before you go, could you scratch the place just over my right eyebrow?"

* * *

It was Jenny at the nurses' station again. "Hi," Vic said. "I hear Mac had a rough night?"

"Ooh, yeah, I heard about that one when I came on this morning," Jenny said. "Sorry about the restraints."

Vic shrugged. "He understands. Can I take them off him now, though? While he's awake?"

Jenny frowned. "You could, but you'd better make sure to put them back on as soon as he drifts off again. They're for his own protection as much as anything. He really had quite an adventure last night."

"I know, the wrist. I saw it."

"Not just that. He ripped off his IV and oxygen support, and went running away down the corridor. The night nurse told me he _fought off_ two orderlies on the way out. Not the kind of excitement we see very often in the ICU, I tell ya! And then he had a cardiac arrest over by the elevators."

Vic stared at her. "He _what_?"

"The doctor will talk to you when she comes around. Try not to worry too much, though—I understand they got him going again pretty quickly, he shouldn't see any permanent damage."

"Oh my God." Vic's knees felt suddenly weak. There was nowhere convenient to sit, so he just gripped the high edge of Jenny's desk. "He had a _heart attack_?"

Jenny looked at him sympathetically. "A sudden cardiac arrest. It's not quite the same thing. Anyway, that's why they decided they'd better restrain him." She looked down at some paperwork in front of her. "He's under some light sedation now, too. There's a psych eval scheduled for this afternoon."

Oh, and _that_ was all they needed. Fuck. Well, Mac was going to have to handle that somehow. And he'd be able to handle it better if he wasn't high, so: time to bring up his history. And maybe even lay it on a bit thick. "Listen," Vic said, "about the sedation. That's actually what I came out here to talk to you about. It's not a good idea to give him that stuff. He's got a history of drug abuse."

Jenny raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"I didn't mention it before because I didn't think it was relevant. But he was using heroin for a while. A few years ago." Actually just for six weeks, and under very particular circumstances—but that was still enough to make Vic very nervous around the topic of Mac and drugs. And besides, there was an urgent need right now to get Mac sobered up before he had to talk to the shrink. "Do I have the right to withdraw consent, for him being given anything else that would make him high?"

"You don't," she said, "but I will put a note on the file. They take that kind of thing pretty seriously."

"Thanks." Vic swallowed. One crisis dealt with, maybe, but he was still reeling from the revelation that Mac's _heart_ had stopped last night. _Fuck_. "Um, how long am I allowed to stay with him for? In the room?"

She looked a little surprised. "Oh, you don't have to leave. You're listed as immediate family. You're responsible for getting your own food, of course—you can go down to the cafeteria, or there's a few fast food places in the strip mall just up the road. Change your mask, gloves and gown whenever you come and go. The chair in the room pulls out flat if you need to rest."

Vic blinked. "I'd be allowed to stay the night?"

"Uh huh. Actually if you're available, that might be really helpful. I bet he'd be less inclined to panic if you were there."

He almost certainly would, and Vic felt a moment of crushing guilt for _not_ having been there last night. But Li Ann and Taylor had needed him, and Mac had understood. And what's done, was done.

But Vic decided right then: he wouldn't leave Mac again. He _couldn't_.

* * *

Mac was asleep when Vic went back into the room. Vic's fingers twitched with the urge to hug him, to hold his hand—but he realized it would be better not to disturb him.

There was a phone in the room, which Vic used to call the safe house. Sonny answered. Vic asked to talk to Li Ann, but Sonny said she was sleeping.

Vic's first impulse was to leave a message for Li Ann to call him back. But then he realized that he was being ridiculous. For better or for worse, Sonny _was_ their support network right now. He wasn't an ally that Vic would have chosen, but he was the one that they had. "Listen, something's come up. I think I'm going to need to stay at the hospital with Mac for a few days. Is there any way that you could..." Vic swallowed. He _really_ hated to ask for this, "...that you could, um, stay with Li Ann and Taylor for a while longer?"

Sonny made a gruffly sympathetic noise. "He's in pretty bad shape, then?"

Vic figured he could frame this in a way that at least preserved some of Mac's bad-ass cred. "Well, he got disoriented when he woke up last night, and he tried to fight his way out of the ICU. I guess he actually took out a couple of orderlies?"

Sonny let out a sharp bark of laughter. "Ha, good for him! How far'd he get?"

"The elevators at the end of the hall." Vic shut his eyes, overwhelmed suddenly just _thinking_ about it again. "And then his heart stopped."

"Shee-it."

"So I, uh, really don't want to leave him alone again." Oh, oops, Vic's voice had cracked a little there at the end. _That's great, Vic. Break into tears on the phone call with the grizzled old motorcycle gangster._

"You go ahead and stay in Sudbury as long as you need to," Sonny said. "I might not be able to stay here the whole time, but I'll make sure you're covered."

"Thanks. I really appreciate it." Vic swiped the inside of his wrist across his eyes, and cleared his throat. "Oh. And maybe don't tell Li Ann about the heart attack?" Er, 'sudden cardiac arrest'. Whatever. Unlike Mac, Li Ann _did_ have a reasonably healthy sense of self-preservation, and probably wouldn't drag herself out of her sick-bed to check on Mac. But she didn't need that kind of worry laid on her right now. She could hear the whole story later.

"Yeah, I hear you," Sonny said. "You take care now. Bye."

* * *

Mac slept for most of the day.

A doctor came by mid-morning to check on him, and she updated Vic with a slightly bewildering list of medical details. The upshot seemed to be that there was serious lung damage from the fire, but that the extent of it couldn't really be investigated until the pneumonia had cleared up. And that the lung damage was almost certainly the _reason_ that Mac and Li Ann had developed pneumonia, particularly considering that Taylor and Vic had experienced the virus as a mild cold.

The doctor also indicated that cardiac arrests were bad and that Mac should probably try not to have any more, but that it didn't look like he was going to suffer any lasting effects from the one that he'd had. She strongly advised against any further hand-to-hand combat with the ICU staff, though.

Mac managed a sheepish smile at that remark.

After the doctor left, while Mac was still awake, Vic warned him about the upcoming psychiatric evaluation. Mac nodded his understanding and then drifted off to sleep, holding Vic's hand.

To Vic's surprise, he wasn't asked to leave the room when the psychologist arrived. Remembering the way that Reshmi had never liked him jumping in during her sessions with Mac, he did keep quiet. The evaluation itself turned out to be fairly cursory, and didn't brush up against any cover-breaking details. The psychologist mostly seemed to be concerned with checking that Mac didn't have any pressing, ongoing desires to harm himself or others.

She did pull Vic out of the room at the end of the interview, to ask _him_ a few questions. Vic tried to strike the ideal balance between truthfulness and discouraging follow-up. He confirmed that the night terrors were a long-standing issue and that Mac did sometimes get briefly violent when he was half-asleep and confused, but that he had never hurt anyone while fully awake (here Vic mentally edited out all violence done on the job, because that clearly wasn't what the psychologist was asking about anyway). He also assured her that Mac had been getting therapy, and was coping pretty well on a day-to-day basis.

Other than that, the day was extremely quiet. Nurses came and went and checked things. Mac occasionally opened his eyes, seemed satisfied that Vic was still there, and closed them again. The doctor came back again in the afternoon and woke Mac up to check more things in more detail. Vic made one quick run down to the cafeteria for lunch and another for supper, anxious each time about leaving Mac alone, but it was fine.

Vic had a lot of time to think.

One thing he thought about was how astounding it was that this was the first time in his life that he'd ever spent much time in a hospital room. Considering the nature of the life he'd lived—wow.

He'd been with the Agency for five years before Li Ann came along. He'd never had a regular partner in all that time. The Director said she liked how he worked alone. So he'd collaborated with other agents from time to time, as convenience and missions dictated, but he'd never had anyone he'd gotten _close_ to, before Li Ann and Mac.

Even Li Ann hadn't been a regular partner at first. The Director had brought Vic out to Vancouver with her when she'd started working on the Pacific Rim task force, and had paired him with Li Ann on a one-off assignment. They'd started dating after that, but they hadn't worked together again until the day the Director had thrown them together with Mac and told them that they were a team.

Every once in a while, the Director pulled Vic aside privately and let him know that another of the agents he'd worked with before was dead now.

So that was one perspective on the lack of extended hospital stays in Vic's life. Typical field agent injuries were either minor—or fatal.

He didn't like to think about the odds. Fifty percent of active field agents per year, on average, died. Vic had been active for over seven years now, with no serious injuries, and it would be nice to think that he was just that good, but he could think of far too many days when he knew he'd been damn lucky.

How long could he keep being lucky? And Mac? And Li Ann?

Mac and Li Ann's luck had nearly run out on Canada Day, and Mac's presence here in this hospital room was a direct result of injuries he'd gotten that day.

Usually Vic put all of this morbid stuff out of his head and just got on with the work. But sitting here, holding Mac's hand and hoping he didn't stop breathing, Vic had time to reflect. And reflecting _sucked_.

Working for the Agency was going to get them killed.

They'd talked about running away. Well, Vic had wanted to run away with Taylor, and Mac and Li Ann had vetoed that, and they'd been right to do so. But Vic still remembered Mac's promise, in the midst of that discussion, that he'd run away in a heartbeat if Vic and Li Ann would come with him—once they'd returned Taylor to her parents.

Mac had wanted out from the beginning. He'd stayed for the first year because the Director had kept the threat of the Tangs hanging over his head; he'd stayed after that because he wouldn't leave Vic and Li Ann.

He'd barely survived last night.

"Hey," Vic said softly the next time Mac woke up. "I've been thinking. Once this mission is over, let's run away."

Mac squinted at him groggily. "Leave the Agency?"

"Uh huh. For real." He squeezed Mac's hand. "I mean, not the _day_ we get back. Let's do it right. We'll make a good plan, so we don't end up working for bikers to support ourselves."

"Has Li Ann agreed?"

"I haven't talked to her yet. I just decided now." Vic thought about that one for a moment. "What if she doesn't? Would you go without her?"

Mac blinked up at him. "You're serious." He closed his eyes again. "Fuck, Vic. Don't make me decide that right now."

"Okay." He patted Mac's hand. "Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No, I'm glad you did," Mac murmured, sounding like he was already drifting off again. "Just don't forget to talk to Li Ann."


	15. Chapter 15

Mac was in the ICU for two days, the step-down unit for another two days, and a regular bed for another week.

Vic basically didn't leave his side the whole time. There were the nightmares to deal with, and they didn't only happen at night. The restraints were helpful in the sense that there wasn't any danger of Mac fleeing down the hallway again, but Vic suspected that they made Mac _more_ prone to panic when he was waking up from a bad dream. But Vic was there to talk him down; he spoke urgently and soothingly, orienting Mac, and peeled the restraints off as soon as possible so that Mac could move his arms and, usually, reach for a hug.

After the first day, Li Ann called the room every day to check in. She chatted with Vic, and with Mac if he was awake. So Vic learned that Sonny had pulled together a whole _team_ to look after Li Ann and Taylor—a couple of his daughters, one of his ex-wives, and Pat and George from next door on the other side had all been taking shifts. And Li Ann was getting better, slowly but steadily.

Li Ann's follow-up appointment came on the third day that Mac was in the regular ward. Sonny's youngest daughter Trish, who had a two-year-old of her own and therefore a toddler car seat, drove Li Ann and Taylor in to Sudbury.

Kids under twelve were allowed to visit the regular ward, so Trish brought Taylor into Mac's room to stay with Mac and Vic while Li Ann went to her appointment.

Taylor was clearly thrilled to see Mac and Vic again, and it was absolutely mutual. Vic cuddled and hugged her and bounced her around, and once she was ready to be a little more quiet he set her on Mac's lap so that Mac could read to her. Trish had dropped off their complete board book collection along with Taylor and the diaper bag.

Mac kissed the top of Taylor's head and grinned wide. "Okay, here we go. A cow says moo... a sheep says baa... three singing pigs say la la la!"

Meanwhile, Vic darted in to stop Taylor from pulling the oxygen tube away from Mac's nose. "Uh uh, Taytay, don't grab that."

Mac read two books to Taylor, and then Vic could tell he was getting tired. Vic reclaimed Taylor and sat with her on the chair next to the bed, and read more books while Mac just listened. After a while, Taylor started nodding off; it was pretty much her afternoon nap time.

"Do you think she could nap up here?" Mac whispered, patting the space on the bed beside him.

Vic shrugged. "We could give it a try." The bed was up in recliner mode, so that Mac's upper body was propped up at about forty-five degrees. Vic lifted Taylor up and set her so that her head was resting against the side of Mac's chest; Mac put his arm around her to hold her close. She stirred and opened her eyes, but then stuck her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes again, sucking contentedly.

"Thanks," Mac whispered, and closed his own eyes.

So then Vic just sat in the chair and watched them sleep, feeling very peaceful.

* * *

Li Ann showed up about an hour later. Vic had actually drifted off in the chair; her footsteps woke him up.

"Hi," she said softly. "You're all very lively."

Vic stood up and stretched; rolled the crick out of his neck. "Naptime," he shrugged. Then he opened his arms to invite a hug. "Oh my God it's good to see you, Li Ann."

She accepted and returned the hug, squeezing him pretty tight. "You too," she said. "And Mac," she added, looking over at the bed. "Wow, that's so weird, I've never seen him with a beard before."

"Hm," Vic agreed, running a hand over his own rough two-day stubble. He'd been managing a shower and shave about every second day in the family support room. Sonny's ex-wife Sherry had dropped off some some toiletries for him at one point, along with a few changes of clothes.

Li Ann's gaze lingered on Mac. "It makes him look older, don't you think?"

"Maybe," Vic said. "But he's also sick, so..." He shrugged again.

"Why are there wrist cuffs on the rails of the bed?" Li Ann asked.

Vic stepped back with a guilty start. "Oh, _shit_. I'm supposed to put those on him when he sleeps." Taylor's presence had distracted him—or the tranquility of the joint naptime had made him forget.

"_Why_?"

Vic rubbed the back of his neck in a reflexive, anxious gesture. "Ah, please don't freak out. I didn't tell you because I didn't want to worry you while you were sick yourself. But, the first night he was in the hospital, when he was on his own—he woke up from a nightmare and tried to break out of the ICU." As he was speaking, he went over and started gently re-cuffing Mac. "He actually fought a couple of orderlies on the way out, apparently. And that was way too much strain on him. He collapsed by the elevators. His heart stopped. They got it started again really quickly, he's okay. But yeah, since then we've been using the cuffs." 

Li Ann looked appalled. "Oh my _God_. No wonder you insisted on staying here the whole time."

"Yeah." Vic finished securing the second cuff. In fact, he personally thought that Mac probably didn't need them anymore. It had been a couple of days since the last time he'd woken up really freaking out from a nightmare. And he was stronger, too; when he'd been moved into the regular ward they'd removed the catheter and let him start shuffling over to the en-suite bathroom, with Vic's help, when he needed to go. He was off the IV nutrition and eating solid food now, and as of today had instructions to try walking up and down the hallway a few times per day for exercise.

The hospital staff had requested that they keep using the cuffs, though, and Mac was in agreement; he felt terrible about having attacked the orderlies.

As Vic moved away again, Taylor stirred. He hadn't managed to avoid bumping her while he was cuffing Mac on that side.

"Mommy?" she said, sitting up.

"I'm here, Taytay." Li Ann moved in to pick Taylor up.

"Are you okay to carry her?" Vic asked with some concern.

She nodded, absently finger-combing Taylor's hair into some semblance of neatness. "I'm pretty much over the infection. The doctor said I should keep taking it easy for the next week, but I'm okay to do basic housework and childcare, at least."

"Well, that's a relief," Vic said.

Li Ann nodded. "Everyone's been just amazing, stepping in to help us. But I'm glad I won't need that anymore."

Just then, Mac stirred and opened his eyes. "Li Ann!" he exclaimed joyfully. He made an aborted gesture—an attempt at a wave, or an invitation to hug?—cut short by the cuffs.

"Oops," Vic murmured, "I just put those on you. Let me take them off." So he peeled the velcro apart again—and then took Taylor, so that Li Ann could crawl right up on the bed with Mac and embrace him.

"Is it okay to kiss?" Vic heard Li Ann whisper.

Mac nodded, and they did. Then Li Ann rested her head against Mac's shoulder, and sighed. "Vic told me about your heart stopping," she said.

"Huh?" Mac said. "Oh. Fuck. Don't worry about that, it wasn't a big deal. How are _you_ doing? How was the appointment?"

"Well, I'm pretty much over the pneumonia."

Mac gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. "That's great!"

"As for the original lung damage..." Li Ann frowned, and sat up. "The _good_ news is, I've got a referral to a specialist, and I've finally got a proper, non-forged prescription for the inhalers."

"What's the bad news?" Vic asked.

Li Ann hugged her knees and said something in Cantonese, scowling.

Mac raised his eyebrows. "I don't think that Huang will be thrilled if we teach Taylor _those_ words, Li Ann."

She glared at him briefly, and then sank back against the raised top of the bed. She took Mac's hand, and but looked at Vic. "The _bad_ news," she said, "is that the damage looks permanent. My lung capacity's at about sixty percent of what it should be. There's scarring. The doctor doesn't think the asthma is going to go away."

"Shit," Vic said with feeling. "I'm so sorry, Li Ann."

"Sit!" Taylor echoed cheerfully.

"Oops," Vic murmured.

"I asked him about what it _means_," she went on. "I couldn't tell him what I really do, obviously, but I told him that I do a lot of sports, that it's really important to me. He said that I shouldn't give up on it; lung capacity isn't the whole story, exercise and training really make a difference. He told me about another patient of his, a man in his sixties with forty percent lung capacity, who runs marathons." She gave a sad smile. "But he doesn't run them very _fast_."

"Okay," Mac said. "Exercise and training. We can do that." He looked over at Vic. "I think it's time for another trip up and down the hall."

So they signalled for the nurse to come and detach Mac from the oxygen supply. The IV pole came with him; he could use it for support.

"Are you sure about this?" Li Ann asked, looking a little worried at the preparations. She was holding Taylor again, as Vic and the nurse between them helped Mac stand up.

"Uh huh," Mac said. "We'll all go for a walk together. It'll be fun."

"Legitimately, the doctor did tell him to do this," Vic assured her.

And off they went. Mac held the IV pole with one hand, and Vic supported him on the other side. Li Ann set Taylor down and held her hand, explaining that they were going on a _slow_ walk with Daddy; Taylor seemed to grasp the concept reasonably well. She did weave around Li Ann's legs a lot, putting in extra distance that way and winning smiles from various passers-by in the hallway.

Mac smiled a lot too, at the people they passed and at Taylor and Li Ann. Vic knew he was struggling, though. This was his third trip down the hall today—he'd gone once immediately after the doctor had told him that he could/should, and once again later in the morning. Each time he'd been completely wiped out afterwards.

And here he went again.

'Exercise and training.' Not something that Mac or Li Ann had ever skimped on. Their physical prowess, particularly their fighting, had always tremendously impressed Vic. Now he thought about how much _work_ the two of them had always put into that—and how central it was to their identities. How upsetting it must be for Li Ann, right now, to have been told that her abilities were permanently damaged. How distressing it must be for Mac to realize that he was almost certainly going to receive the same news, once he recovered from his illness.

Then Vic thought about how one of the first things Mac had done, at the safe house, was to make that heavy punching bag out of tires. Then Mac had gone into the back yard every morning to work out for hours, even when he could barely breathe. Li Ann had joined him, as soon as she got back from New York, even while she still had the knee brace on. And they'd insisted on going for all those long runs in the park with Vic, even though they'd needed to use the inhalers before they went.

Ever since Canada Day, they'd both been desperately trying to gain their capacities back again.

They weren't going to stop.

Vic felt a shiver go down his spine, a physical manifestation of the love and worry that filled him at the thought.

And _that_ reminded him: he wanted to get them away from the Agency before it killed them.

He'd promised Mac that he'd talk to Li Ann about it, and he hadn't yet; it hadn't felt like a conversation to have on the phone.

"And then Pat's husband George brought over this _amazing_ apple pie," Li Ann was saying. "Taylor ate a whole slice all by herself!"

Mac didn't really have enough breath to speak and move at the same time, but he was doing it anyway. "I've ... never ... had ... apple ... pie."

"I'm afraid you won't get any of this one," Li Ann said. "It is _definitely_ going to be gone by the time you get home. But maybe he'll make another one! Or maybe he could show Vic how to do it. Vic, would you be willing to learn how to make apple pie?"

"I think we should all leave the Agency," he blurted out in reply.

"Ah, what?" Li Ann looked at him with confusion.

Okay, that had been a non-sequitur from Li Ann's perspective. "I've been thinking about it a lot," he said. "I think it's our only choice. The Agency uses people until they're dead or broken. Usually dead. I don't want that to happen to us. We'll have to wait until we've finished protecting Taylor, obviously. But after that, I think we should pull together our resources and run."

"Maybe ... not ... in ... the ... hallway?" Mac murmured.

"Huh? Oh, shit. Sorry." Vic glanced around quickly; nobody was staring at them, at least. "I just, um." His voice broke unexpectedly on the last word.

"It's okay," Li Ann said quickly, patting his arm with her free hand. "We can talk about this. But let's get back to Mac's room."

* * *

It was a double-occupancy room, but the guy in the other bed had been discharged in the morning, and it hadn't received another occupant yet. So once they were back in the room, and once the nurse had come in to re-start Mac's oxygen, they had privacy.

Vic was sitting on the chair, with Taylor on his lap. Holding her was good for regaining his composure. He'd felt almost like he might start crying there, in the hallway, and that wasn't the way he wanted to have this discussion. Taylor's warm, solid toddler presence was very soothing. She was drinking water from her sippy cup and flipping through the pages of _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_.

Li Ann was sitting at the foot of Mac's bed, just to the side of his feet, and absently rubbing his toes through the blanket. "So you want to run away," she said, looking at Vic. "Why now? You've been at the Agency for seven years. You like the work."

"_Sometimes_ we do good work," Vic agreed. He'd wanted to jump right into the 'either we get out or we die' speech, but he realized that he actually needed to address this. Because Li Ann was right; he _had_ always liked the work. He'd lived for it. He'd accepted the risks. But something had changed, lately, and he needed to put his finger on what that was. "We catch the bad guys, we help people. But you know who else gets paid to do that? The cops. And you know what the difference is between us and the cops?"

"We're ... smarter ... and better?" Mac suggested, with a cheeky grin that wasn't at all dampened by the fact that he was almost too exhausted to talk.

"Hey, I _was_ a cop, doofus," Vic reminded him.

Mac's even wider grin said that he had in no way forgotten that.

"The _difference_," Vic said, "is that the cops have to follow the _law_. Remember when we first got to know Ben? I mean when we _really_ got to know him, once the Director had let him know we were agents. Remember how freaked out he was by the fact that you guys had never even heard of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?"

"You've told me lots of times how much more efficient we are than the cops, since we're not bogged down by all that paperwork," Li Ann pointed out. "How many times would somebody have been _killed_ if we'd had to stop and get a warrant every time we wanted to break into a place?"

"Yeah, but remember the droogs?" Vic said. "And Karen Ruby? She was completely innocent, she just knew too much. The Cleaners would have _killed_ her if we hadn't stopped them, and they got their orders from somebody at the Agency."

Li Ann frowned. "Not from _our_ director. She sent us to save Karen."

"Yeah, I think our director might be the _least_ inclined to abuse of power of any of the Agency higher-ups," Vic said. "And you know what she's capable of, so contemplate that one for a minute. I mean, think about how she recruited you. Think about how she recruited _Mac_."

"She saved us from prison and gave us a second chance at life."

"She traded your baby for military secrets. She threatened to turn Mac over to the Tangs if he didn't work for her." Vic sighed. "And have you thought about _why_ she recruited us? Two thieves and a dirty cop?"

"You were never dirty," Li Ann said, the way she always did.

Vic shrugged. "But my record said I was. The Agency recruits criminals. _Why_?"

"Our ... skills," Mac suggested.

"Sure, that's part of it. We can fight and spy and break into places. And we're supposed to do it without moral qualms. _And_," he grimaced, "we're disposable. The day we get killed, nobody's going to come looking for us. We'll disappear without a trace."

"Like the ... Chinese agents," Mac said.

(The wind in the dark and the burning cabin and the kick of the gun in his hand. _Fuck_. He needed to think about something else.)

Li Ann was giving Mac a warning look. "The Director makes hard choices," she said. "If we were in her place, if we knew everything that she knows, we might make the same ones."

"That might be true," Vic admitted. "But I think I'm done with being her tool. The Agency is too morally ambiguous to deserve the sacrifice it demands of us. Li Ann, if we keep working for the Director we are _definitely_ going to die. I think I'm not okay with that anymore."

She regarded him thoughtfully for a long moment, and then said, "It's not yourself you're worried about, is it?"

Vic's eyes flicked automatically to Mac—and then to Li Ann, who was still watching him. She nodded, as though he'd answered her question.

"I understand," she said. "It's easier to face death yourself than to think about losing somebody you love. You never had to deal with that before. Okay."

Mac's eyes widened hopefully. "Okay ... you'll come?"

She gave him a gentle look. "No, I just meant—okay, I'll play along. Let's talk this out. I _have_ been thinking about it too. I know you've always wanted out. I didn't think that Vic did—that whole running-away-with-Taylor thing was about his dream of being a family, it wasn't about anything real."

Vic winced at that and nearly jumped in to defend the idea of the three of them as a real family, but Li Ann was still talking; he decided not to interrupt her.

"There are two compelling reasons not to run, that I can see," she said. "Number one: if we do, we'll never see Taylor again."

"We won't ... anyway," Mac said softly.

"We _might_ not. When I gave her to the Director, when she was born, I understood that I'd never see her again. But now we have. I don't know if we ever will again, but as long as we keep our connection to the Agency, it's not _impossible_. If we break the connection..." she trailed off with a sigh. "I'm not saying that we definitely should stay because of that. But it's something to keep in mind."

Vic's heart sank. Li Ann was right. And Vic had a feeling that the hope of seeing Taylor again might be the one thing that _would_ convince Mac to stay at the Agency.

"I'm hungwee," Taylor interjected. She'd lost interest in the book a while ago and had been patting Vic's beard stubble.

"There's a container of orange slices in the diaper bag," Li Ann said.

Vic fished out the plastic container and opened it for Taylor.

"What's the second reason?" Vic asked, as Taylor started gnawing on an orange piece.

"This," she said, waving a hand vaguely at Mac.

Mac's eyes had closed while Vic wasn't watching. He seemed to have drifted off to sleep. "Mac?" Vic asked. "Li Ann, Mac's the _reason_ I want to go."

"Not Mac," she said. "This whole thing." She waved again. "The hospital. Getting sick, needing health care. Mac and I are _damaged_ now. The doctor said that I need to, ah, _adjust_ to this. That it's my new normal." Her expression tightened. "Any time I get a cold, I have to worry about this. It'll be the same for Mac. The damage in our lungs makes them vulnerable to infection. We'll _have_ to have access to doctors."

"So, uh, we don't go anywhere without doctors?" Vic said.

Li Ann rolled her eyes. "It's not the _existence_ of the doctors that's the problem. It's _paying_ for them."

"But we don't have to pay for—" Vic stopped. "Oh. Shit. We don't have to pay for doctors as long as we have ID saying that we're Canadian citizens."

"ID that holds up when it's put in the system." She nodded. "We have that now, but the Director can track us by it. Getting fake ID on that level is tricky, and expensive. Not impossible, but risky. Or, we go somewhere else—but then we need a _lot_ of money. Remember how fast I burned through three thousand dollars in New York?"

"Okay, you're right," Vic agreed reluctantly, feeling the weight of reality settling uncomfortably upon him. "You're right about all of it. But that doesn't change the fact that—" He stopped, looking over at Mac. "Mac, are you awake?" he asked. Waited. No response. He lowered his voice, anyway. "Li Ann, I don't think that Mac can survive working for the Agency for much longer."

"He's made it this far," Li Ann hedged. "Technically his risks are the same as ours." But by the tone of her voice, Vic could tell that she knew he was right.

"He's not _careful_ like we are," Vic said. "He's _good_, but that's not enough."

She nodded. "Especially now."

Vic groaned. "Jesus. He got so much sicker than you did. It wasn't just bad luck, was it? When you started feeling awful you _rested_, and he kept pushing himself. Which he did because he was trying to protect _us_. We needed the money, so he thought he had to work." Speaking of which—Vic was trying not to think about how fast they were bleeding money _now_. They still had a cash reserve. They'd figure something out.

"Maybe that was an issue, maybe not," Li Ann said. "I think that his original injuries were worse than mine, actually. He's been leaning on the rescue inhaler pretty heavily."

Well, that was one more thing to worry about. "Either way," Vic said, "when he's back at the Agency, he's going to be at risk. You _know_ he has no sense of self-preservation."

"That's a problem whether we're at the Agency or not," Li Ann pointed out. "That's who he _is_."

"It wouldn't be the same kind of issue if we had normal lives. If we weren't going into life-or-death situations all the time."

She sighed. "We don't have to decide now. There's nothing we can do about this until we're back in Toronto. I'll think about it, Vic. You should, too—think about how we would actually live, how we would support ourselves. We're trying to live like normal people _now_, and we're not doing very well, are we?"

"We're working with some handicaps," Vic pointed out. "Key River is _not_ a place where it makes sense to live when you're looking for work."

She shrugged acknowledgement of that, and then looked at her watch. "I have to go. Trish is supposed to pick me and Taylor up out front in ten minutes." She gave Mac a quick kiss on the cheek, and then went over to collect Taylor and her bag. "You can tell Mac, when he wakes up, that I'm thinking about it," she promised. "And tell him I love him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The book Mac reads out loud to Taylor, with the lines "A cow says moo / a sheep says baa / three singing pigs say la la la!" is _Moo, Baa, La La La!_ by Sandra Boynton—a wonderful book for toddlers which I highly recommend!


	16. Chapter 16

It was amazing how much returning to the safe house felt like going _home_. They'd only been living there for three and a half months, and they didn't have much in the way of possessions. But as soon as Vic crossed the threshold with Mac, the day they left the hospital, he felt suffused with a sense of comfort and belonging.

It didn't hurt that as soon as they walked in, Taylor ran over at top speed to demand cuddles from both of them. Li Ann followed her, and they ended up in a joyful four-way hug that lasted until Taylor got bored and squirmed her way down out of the middle of it.

They couldn't exactly go back to their old routine, at least not at first. Mac spent most of the first few days resting on the couch. Taylor liked to play nearby on the floor of the living room, chatting idly and semi-nonsensically with Mac and climbing up for frequent snuggles. Li Ann or Vic took her away when Mac needed to nap.

Every day Mac got stronger. He started going for walks; Vic or Li Ann always accompanied him, sometimes bringing Taylor along, too. When he'd been out of the hospital for four days, they made their first excursion back to the provincial park, with the jogging stroller (though of course they were only walking; running was still off the table for a while yet). Taylor was beside herself with delight at the chance to go leaping into the drifts of fallen leaves.

Mac started going over to visit Sonny again. Considering everything that Sonny had done for them, Vic could hardly object. Li Ann sometimes went with him. Vic did at least manage to successfully insist that Taylor not be brought along on those visits, by reminding Mac of the time she'd nearly eaten a half-rolled joint off of Sonny's coffee table.

Vic made another supply run into Sudbury, and checked in at the job centre. Still nothing. The staff apologetically mentioned that unemployment tended to be higher in the winter, and asked if he wanted help applying for social assistance. Vic took the forms and said that he'd think about it.

"Can we _do_ that?" Li Ann asked, at the dinner table that night. "Go on welfare?"

"Theoretically? I guess so," Vic said. "We have social insurance numbers. The Director said that our IDs were solid enough that we could work; that _probably_ means that they'd hold up for this, too. You made it through the health care system. The only thing is, they're definitely going to want to know our employment history, and it's going to look pretty weird that we don't have any. And I bet that there's never been income tax paid under any of our names. That'll look _really_ sketchy."

"How soon will we run out of money?" Li Ann asked. "If we don't do anything?"

Vic felt his shoulders tense. He was starting to really hate thinking about money. "We can buy gas and groceries twice more," he said. "As long as we don't pay the hydro bill that came yesterday. And, um, that's not counting if you two need to refill your meds."

"I guess we'd better try the welfare, then," Li Ann said.

Taylor started to climb down from her chair; Mac caught her and wiped her fingers, then let her go. "So hey," he mentioned to Vic and Li Ann, "in other news, tomorrow's Halloween."

Vic raised an eyebrow at the subject change. "Uh huh?"

"Pat and Sonny told me that if we want to bring Taylor by their places around suppertime, she can trick-or-treat."

"Really? Huh. Did they coordinate?"

"I guess it was Pat's idea," Mac said. "She got Sonny on board. She came by when I was visiting him earlier today."

The day they'd moved into the safe house, when Pat had warned them against going to Sonny's party, Vic had assumed that the neighbours weren't on speaking terms. The truth, as he'd discovered over the course of the summer, was more complicated. Pat and George, understandably, kept their distance from Sonny's biker social circle. But when Ethel, the elderly previous occupant of the safe house, had been alive, Pat and George and Sonny had collaborated to look out for her. Also, during the summer, George mowed the lawns of all three properties with his ride-on mower. In exchange, in the winter Sonny kept the gravel road and all of their driveways open with a snow plow hooked up to the front of his pickup truck.

Vic considered the Halloween invitation for a moment, and tried to think of whether there was any reason not to do it—but he couldn't think of one. "That sounds like fun. I bet Taylor will get a kick out of it. That's really nice of them."

* * *

Taylor didn't exactly understand the concept of Halloween, but she caught on to the excitement. Her costume consisted of one of Li Ann's tank tops worn as a 'ballgown' over her fall jacket, and a wooden spoon for a magic wand.

Li Ann and Mac were weirdly impressed with Vic for having pulled the costume together—considering that they were secret agents with plenty of professional experience with disguises, he would've expected them to be a little more critical of his efforts. But they both seemed completely charmed.

"I've never trick-or-treated before!" Mac mentioned as they headed out the door.

"Me neither," Li Ann said. "I've only read about it in books."

"I used to go every year when I was a kid," Vic said. "Around the whole neighbourhood. I'd bring a pillowcase to put the candy in."

"Should we go back for a pillowcase?" Mac asked.

Vic laughed and shook his head. "We're only going to two houses."

"Twick owa tweet!" Taylor called out.

"Good job, Taytay," Mac said. "But wait until we get to Pat and George's house."

Taylor managed a creditable job of trick-or-treating. She said the phrase, with prompting, at each opened door, and managed (also with prompting) a shy 'fank-you' when she received her treats—a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie at Pat and George's, and a small bag of potato chips at Sonny's. Pat gave cookies to the grownups, too, and Mac was visibly thrilled, barely managing to keep his glee at his first-ever Halloween treat under wraps until Pat's door was safely shut.

"You basically _are_ a two-year-old at heart," Li Ann told Mac, before biting into her own cookie with obvious satisfaction.

"I think you meant that to be insulting, but I'll take it as a compliment," Mac declared around his own cookie. "Taytay has a _wonderful_ heart."

Vic just smiled, ate his cookie, and wished he could hold on to this moment forever.

* * *

Li Ann slept in Taylor's room that night, leaving Mac and Vic privacy in the adults' room.

Vic discovered belatedly that this was a plan that Li Ann and Mac had negotiated ahead of time: Mac had decided that it was time to resume having sex.

Not that Vic minded. He even resisted the impulse to ask Mac whether he was sure he was ready; Mac had been out of the hospital for a week, he'd been going on longer and longer walks, and he wasn't showing any strain from their trick-or-treating adventure.

So they had sex. It felt _wonderful_.

* * *

Afterwards, they lay naked in bed with the sheet over them, cuddling and kissing languidly. "Oh my God I missed this," Vic murmured.

"Mmm, me too," Mac agreed, rubbing his toes idly against Vic's ankle. "You know, a couple of times in the hospital, I was _so_ tempted to ask you for a blowjob. I didn't want to get you kicked out of the room, though."

Vic raised an eyebrow. "Mac, there's no way I would've given you a blowjob in the hospital. The room had a _window_ for the nurses to look in!"

Mac just grinned, and kissed Vic's ear. "Uh, listen," he said. "There's something I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh?" Vic said, with a little trepidation—Mac's tone had gone serious all of a sudden.

"Sonny's offered me some more work."

"But the pot field's shut down for the winter," Vic said.

"Uh huh." Mac bit his lip. "You're going to like this even less. He's offered to give me a shot at dealing."

"_What_? Shit. _No,_ Mac."

"It's easier work than guarding the field, in a lot of ways. Shorter hours, better money."

"I said no."

"I already ran it by Li Ann," Mac went on, blithely ignoring Vic. "She thinks I should go for it."

"We _agreed_," Vic reminded him, "we're going to apply for welfare."

Mac shook his head. "Li Ann and I looked over the paperwork this morning while you were playing outside with Taylor. Even _if_ our cover manages to stand up under the kind of scrutiny we'd get if we applied for assistance, we wouldn't actually get enough to live on. We looked at the receipts you've been keeping, for the food, the gas, the insurance, the hydro. We'd _almost_ make it, except for the medications. The inhalers are expensive. And winter's coming. We're gonna need new stuff, aren't we? Coats, boots."

"Winter tires," Vic added softly. He'd been thinking about this too. He'd come to the same conclusion that Mac and Li Ann had, about how they wouldn't actually be able to survive long-term on welfare. His current plan had stood at skipping paying the hydro and insurance bills, and hoping that the Director came for them soon. "Okay. Fuck. _I'll_ do it."

Mac stared at him. "What?"

"You're right, we need the money. We need to preserve our cover. So _I'll_ do it—I'll work for Sonny. You shouldn't have to take all the risks."

"Uh, wow." Mac touched Vic's face. "That's amazingly sweet of you, to say that. I know how uncomfortable Sonny makes you. But seriously—no fucking way are you doing it."

"Oh, I can't tell you not to do it, but you get to tell me not to do it?" Vic raised an eyebrow. "How do you think _that_ works?"

"This isn't your thing, Vic. I really don't think you could handle it."

"From what I understand, 'petty drug dealer' is one of those jobs that doesn't require a lot of qualifications." Vic wrinkled his nose. "How hard can it be?"

"For me? It'll be a walk in the park. For you? I don't think you know how to _not_ look like a cop. You'd scare the customers away."

"I'm a secret agent, not a cop," Vic objected, even though Mac had a point; Vic _did_ tend to get read as a cop. "I can do this."

Mac frowned, and ran a finger lightly along Vic's lips. "Could you? Give people drugs in exchange for money, smile and act casual about it? Come home afterwards and not hate yourself? I don't think you could."

Well, it was that last bit that was the real problem, wasn't it. And, Vic realized, Mac's true objection. Only there was a logical flaw somewhere here. "Maybe not," he admitted reluctantly. "But how could I ask you to do something that I couldn't do myself?"

"Because it's different for me. It legitimately doesn't bother me. Vic, I was _literally_ born into this. My mom arranged the shipping of industrial quantities of heroin across international borders. I was dealing on the street when I was thirteen. I helped Michael manage his dealers for _years_. Selling a bit of pot in Sudbury isn't going to damage my sense of self. But I think it would really fuck you up."

"Ah, did you tell Sonny all that, by the way?" Vic asked. "About your impressive drug-dealing resume?"

"Of course not. He thinks he's initiating me into the business."

Vic exhaled slowly, closed his eyes for a moment, and thought about it.

Mac was right, in a sense. For Vic, dealing drugs would mean crossing a line—_becoming_ the very thing that he'd been wrongfully sent to jail for in the first place. He'd already crossed a whole lot of lines at the Agency (a man's pleading in the dark, the kick of the gun in his hand, oh _fuck_ don't think about that now) but he'd never crossed _that_ particular one. It would definitely kill a little piece of what was left of his soul. But that wasn't the only problem here. Vic opened his eyes again and looked at Mac. "Okay, let's say I concede the point. You can handle the drug-dealing better than I can, psychologically. But what about physically? You're still _sick_."

"I'm not," Mac said. "I finished the antibiotics yesterday."

Vic knew _that_—he was the one who'd reminded Mac to take every dose. "I mean the lung damage," he said quietly.

The elephant in the room. They hadn't _talked_ about it since the day before Mac left the hospital, when he'd had his assessment.

Li Ann's suspicion had been correct; Mac's damage was more extensive than hers. Li Ann had a theory about why. Apparently she'd gone down when her knee had been injured. She'd been on the floor for a while. Mac had finished off the final opponent by himself, breathing the air higher up for that much longer while the smoke was at its worst. Then Mac had got her on her feet and pulled her out of there.

The result was that while Li Ann's damage was officially classed as 'moderate', Mac's was 'severe'.

"It's not like there's any heavy lifting involved," Mac said. "They sell pot by the ounce."

"And you'd be, what, standing around on a street corner?"

"Uh, no." Mac chuckled softly, presumably at Vic's naivete. "More like pizza delivery. I'd get calls, I'd go to people's houses."

"Driving all the way into Sudbury every time?"

"Not Sudbury proper—that's somebody else's turf. I'd do the outlying regions in our direction."

"That's going to be a lot of gas," Vic murmured—realizing, as he said it, that if he was talking through the logic, he was in the process of letting Mac talk him into it. Fuck.

"They build that into the price of the product. Pot's more expensive when you live out in the boonies, just like food."

"If you do this," Vic said, fully realizing that by uttering the word 'if' he was effectively giving Mac his blessing, "you have to promise to be careful."

"I can still handle a few rural potheads, Vic," Mac said, and the way he prickled as he said it made Vic realize that he'd just pushed on the sore spot. "Nobody's going to rip me off."

"I really hope you don't end up fighting anyone," Vic said, "but I have total confidence that you could still kick just about anybody's ass." He gave his best reassuring smile and won a tentative grin from Mac in return. "_But_," he went on, taking Mac's hand, "I meant you have to be careful about getting sick again. You can't mess around with that anymore, Mac. I know it's hard for you to talk about this stuff, I know why you always push yourself, but if you keep going like that now you're going to kill yourself. You nearly _did_."

"I'm sorry," Mac whispered, wincing, which was when Vic realized that he'd been squeezing Mac's fingers painfully tightly. He let go quickly.

"So you have to promise to tell me how you're feeling. Every day. Never mind the wolves—I want to know if there are _squirrels_."

"Um, squirrels?" Mac repeated, now looking slightly more puzzled than abashed.

"You're going to tell me if you have a _sniffle_. Or if you're using your rescue inhaler more than usual. Or even if you're just feeling run-down or tired."

"And then what?"

"Then I'll take _care_ of you," Vic said, emphatically, even though he wasn't sure exactly how those details would work. "I'll make sure you get enough rest, and I'll take you to the doctor if you need it."

"And what about the job?"

"Doesn't Sonny have anybody else who can do it if you need to take a sick day?" Vic asked. "I mean, who's doing it _now_?"

"Sherry," Mac answered immediately. "But she's going to Florida for November."

"His _ex-wife_ Sherry?" Vic suddenly felt slightly less nervous about this whole plan, if Mac was taking over the pot-delivery route of an asthmatic sixty-three year old lady. "Ah, okay. Well, the point is, we'll figure something out. As long as you tell me about those squirrels."

"I'll try," Mac promised, sounding subdued.

"You _will_." Maybe if Vic said it forcefully enough, he could make it true.

* * *

Mac's first week of drug-dealing went pretty smoothly.

Vic worried, of course. Li Ann _didn't_ seem to worry, which Vic supposed had something to do with how she, like Mac, had spent ten years in a Triad gang.

There was one small argument when Vic realized that Mac was planning to use the borrowed Yamaha bike to get around. Mac pointed out, reasonably, that it was a lot cheaper on gas, plus that way Vic and Li Ann wouldn't be stuck at the safe house without the car. Finally they compromised—Mac would use the car if he was going out after dark, in the rain, or if the temperature dipped below five degrees Celsius.

Which worked fine until Wednesday—it was sunny and warm (for early November) when Mac left in the afternoon, but it was dark, raining and barely above zero when he got home at ten o'clock.

Vic sent Mac into the bathroom for a warm shower immediately, wrapped him in blankets and made him lie on the couch and drink a mug of ginger tea when he got out, and then ordered him to bed. "I'm _fine_," Mac insisted as Vic climbed into bed with him and pulled him in for a tight hug.

"You're _going_ to be," Vic said. "Because you're going to give the bike back and use the car. It's almost _winter_, Mac."

The next morning, Vic kept fussing over Mac. He took his temperature (it was normal), made him drink more tea, and forbade him from working out on the punching bag in the backyard (which he'd started doing again at the beginning of the week, but the mornings were _cold_ now).

"Um, do you think maybe you're going a little overboard here?" Mac asked from the couch mid-morning, looking a bit overwhelmed as Vic handed him his third mug of ginger tea. He was wrapped up in the blankets from both beds, and propped up on pillows. "I'm seriously feeling absolutely fine. No wolves. No squirrels. No _field mice_."

"If you don't want to have to spend the morning resting," Vic said mildly, "you shouldn't ride a motorcycle two hundred kilometres in the freezing rain."

"It wasn't actually _freezing_ rain—" Mac started to qualify, but he was interrupted by Li Ann perching on the arm of the couch, tapping his shoulder, and saying something in Cantonese.

"Huh?" Vic said.

Then Taylor, who'd followed Li Ann into the room, tugged at Vic's leg with a grin and said "I go pee pee!"

"She went pee pee in the potty," Li Ann remarked over her shoulder. "She wants you to admire it. I haven't flushed it yet." Then she went back to speaking to Mac in Cantonese.

"Oh wow," Vic said, determinedly putting on an appropriately impressed parental-type smile. "That's _great_, Taytay!"

So then Vic was distracted with potty-training encouragement for a few minutes. When he got back to the living room, Li Ann was in the kitchen making toast.

"What was that about?" Vic asked, nodding towards the couch.

"Go ask Mac," she said, buttering her toast.

"I'm sorry," Mac said when Vic went to him. He looked pretty contrite, actually. He was clutching his mug in two hands, peering at Vic over it with sad eyebrows.

"Um, for what?" Vic asked.

"For not telling you in time that I was having trouble breathing. When I was coming down with pneumonia. I knew I was getting seriously sick the day before, but I didn't say anything because I was scared of what it meant."

Vic looked over at the kitchen. Li Ann was calmly munching on her toast. "Did Li Ann tell you to say that?" he asked.

"Not exactly," Mac said. "She told me that you're acting crazy because you're scared I'm going to die, and I should just suck it up and let you do whatever you need to do to feel safe again."

Li Ann, in the background, shrugged.

"I'm not acting crazy," Vic said.

Li Ann made an eloquent face.

"Mac is _not_ being careful enough."

"I'll stop using the bike," Mac said. "If you really want me to. I thought it would be better to leave you the car."

"If there's an emergency," Vic said, "we can go over to Sonny's or Pat's. We can plan the trips into Sudbury for when you're not working."

"Okay." Mac gave Vic a slightly timid smile. "So can I get off the couch now, and put the blankets back on the beds?"

"I guess so." And when Mac stood up, Vic kissed him. "I love you," he said quietly, resting his forehead against Mac's.

"I love you too," Mac said, and kissed him back. "And everything's going to be okay. I promise."

* * *

For the first time since they'd arrived at the safe house on Canada Day, they had more money at the end of the week than they'd had at the beginning.

Vic counted it twice, reassuring himself that his math was correct. "Jesus," he murmured, "I guess I can see why people get into the drug trade."

Li Ann raised an eyebrow. "Finally tempted to go over to the dark side, Vic?"

He bristled, even though he knew she was basically just teasing him. "We're still on a mission. The Director will back us up."

"And confiscate our extra profits, if we have any when she picks us up," Mac commented.

"Well, don't go crazy buying gold chains yet," Vic said. "We still need winter coats."

* * *

So everything seemed to be going okay, relatively speaking. And then Saturday night Mac got home late, and crawled into bed with Vic smelling like booze, cigarettes and pot.

And Vic remembered, abruptly, that the Director had mentioned to him once that she never put their team on cases involving street drugs—as a precaution related to Mac's history. _Fuck_.

Mac and Li Ann thought that Vic worried too much, but Vic was pretty sure he actually didn't worry _enough_. He kept getting distracted worrying about one thing at a time, and forgetting to worry about the others.

"Mac," he said, "Please, _please_ tell me you're not drunk and high."

Mac kissed Vic's shoulder. "I am neither of those things."

"So why do I smell it on you?"

"Sonny was having a party. I had two beers. Other people were smoking."

Vic wanted to see Mac's eyes, but it was too dark. He climbed up off the mattress and went to flick the light switch.

Mac sat up, and squinted up at him. "_What_?"

"We need to talk," Vic said. He got back on the mattress, sitting next to Mac, and looked at him carefully. His eyes looked normal; Vic decided that he believed him that he wasn't high. "You're working with drug dealers. You have a history. I think we need to have a serious wolf-related discussion."

Mac looked slightly annoyed. "Vic, they only sell _pot_. Which I can't even smoke, by the way." He coughed.

Vic winced and felt his worry-metre tick up another notch. "Mac, speaking of wolves—anything you wanna tell me about that cough?"

Mac sighed. And coughed again. "Look, the smoke at the party was bothering me. I only stayed long enough to be polite." And coughed.

"Wolves?" Vic prompted.

"I had to use the rescue inhaler," Mac admitted, reluctantly. And coughed again.

"Do you need to use it again?" Vic asked.

Mac hesitated, and then nodded. "Probably, yeah."

"I'll wait," Vic said.

Mac crawled off the mattress, found his discarded pants on the floor, and fished the blue inhaler out of a pocket. Took a dose. Left the inhaler on the floor; settled back on the bed next to Vic, still sitting up.

"Better?" Vic asked.

Mac nodded.

Vic kissed his cheek, for reassurance, and then took his hand. "Okay, look. I know _you_ think everything is fine. But we have an agreement, right? You have to tell _me_ everything, and then let me decide how fine things are. Because you have crappy risk-assessment."

"I know that," Mac said, looking cautious. "But I'm legitimately not sure what you're fishing for, here. I know you're never going to stop freaking out about the fact that I tried to kill myself with heroin in prison, but that was _prison_, everything was different, I'd never do that now, and anyway Sonny's crew doesn't go near that stuff. That's the Rock Machine's business."

Oh look, _another_ thing to worry about. "The Rock Machine's operating up here?"

Mac shrugged it off. "They leave Sonny alone. There's a longstanding agreement. Sonny's crew just sells what they grow, and they don't undercut the Rock Machine on price."

"Jesus." Vic sat back, thinking. "You realize the Rock Machine's been at war with the Hells Angels in Quebec for _years_? There've been, like, a hundred deaths and counting. If Sonny's crew get caught up in the middle of that, they'll get eaten alive."

"Relax," Mac said. "The Hells don't operate in Ontario."

"_This_ is why I didn't want you working for bikers," Vic muttered.

Mac wrinkled his nose. "I thought you didn't want me working for bikers because you're afraid I won't say no to drugs. Make up your mind."

"I can worry about more than one thing at the same time," Vic assured him. He sure was getting enough practice. "Okay, let's talk about the drugs. _Have_ you ever used pot?"

"Pot barely counts as a drug," Mac said.

Vic sighed. "That's a 'yes', then?"

"A few times, sure. I don't actually like it very much. Have _you_ ever used it?"

"No," Vic replied, a bit indignantly. "It's _illegal_."

Mac patted his knee and smirked. "You're adorable."

"I was a cop," Vic said, reflexively.

"And then you were busted for heroin possession, and now you're a shadowy government agent living off of the proceeds of the drug trade. It's a funny world."

Vic felt his jaw clenching, and he almost bit back with something—but he realized in time that Mac was definitely baiting him, and he was probably doing it to deflect Vic's attention. "Speaking of heroin," he said mildly, instead, "did you ever use it outside of prison?"

"_No_," Mac said. "I've _told_ you that."

"You have," Vic agreed, "but you don't always tell me the truth. Especially not the first time I ask."

Mac hugged his knees. "Well, I'm telling the truth about this. I've seen enough fucked-up junkies, Vic. I won't go there."

"Okay." Vic edged closer so that he could put an arm over Mac's shoulders and hug him, because Mac was looking tense and upset now. "I believe you," he said. Decided.

And then realized that there were some other questions he'd never actually thought to ask.

"Did you ever use anything else?"

Mac looked at him. Didn't say anything.

"I'm not going to be mad at you," Vic promised. "I just really, really want to know what kind of wolves to look out for."

"We're not talking _wolves_," Mac said. "It's not like I was ever an addict. I did coke sometimes. And E. Only when I went to a party without Michael, though. He didn't like me to take anything, and he was really controlling."

It was a weird and uncomfortable sensation to feel slightly _grateful_ to Michael. "So that was when you were with the Tangs," Vic said. "Anything since then?"

Mac shook his head.

"Ever _wanted_ to?"

Mac sighed. "If I say yes, are you going to freak out and tell me I can't work for Sonny anymore?"

"Not necessarily," Vic said cautiously, since Mac's answer was already implied by his own question. "I think that if you've wanted to, and you haven't, that implies that you do have the ability to say no, and that's important. I also want to be careful that we're not setting you up to fail. Even if Sonny only sells pot, I bet there are people in his circle who know how to get other stuff. Who would hook you up if you asked them to. I want to know if that might be a problem."

"Coke is an amazing rush," Mac said, sort of pensively. "I'm not gonna lie—I really enjoyed it. But it's dangerous. I know that. I wouldn't use it now." He gave a sort of faint smile. "I wouldn't necessarily say no to doing ecstasy again someday. If I was somewhere safe, and I knew for sure that nobody was gonna come busting through the door and start shooting at me in the next four hours. But I don't see _that_ happening any time soon."

That wasn't exactly the sort of definitive _don't worry I will never do drugs again_ reply that Vic had been hoping for. But it sounded like Mac was telling him the _true_ answer, at least, and that was important. "Okay," Vic said. "Mac, I trust you. I think you can handle this. But if you ever start to feel like you can't, please _please_ tell me right away. Or Li Ann, whatever's easier for you. Promise?"

"Uh huh." Mac sort of hugged his own knees, but then uncurled and looked at Vic directly. "I promise," he said evenly, holding eye contact. "And thanks."

Vic hugged him. "And I love you, no matter what."

* * *

Three days later, everything changed.


	17. Chapter 17

"Vic, Li Ann, wake up!"

Mac's tone yanked Vic out of a deep sleep with a shot of adrenaline. He was on his feet before he even remembered where he was.

He was in the adults' bedroom in the safe house. Mac had just slapped the light switch on. Mac was holding Taylor one-handed; she was clinging to his neck, looking worried.

"What's going on?" Li Ann asked. She was on her feet too, on the other side of the mattress, and although her hair was dishevelled, her stance was stable and she looked ready to fight.

"Bikes," Mac said. "Three, I think. Pulled up to Sonny's place about thirty seconds ago, I heard them."

"Uh?" Vic didn't quite relax, but he did unclench his fists. They weren't under attack by Chinese commandos. "He's a biker. He has biker friends."

"He's seventy-five years old," Mac said. "He doesn't have friends over at three in the morning. I'm going to see what's happening." He thrust Taylor at Vic, and left.

Vic and Li Ann exchanged a quick wide-eyed glance.

"You stay with Taylor"—they both said, simultaneously.

"I can run faster than you can," Vic pointed out, and held Taylor out for her to take.

She rolled her eyes in frustration, but accepted the logic, and the toddler. "Go, then," she said.

Vic ran over to the kitchen. They'd returned the guns to the high kitchen cupboards once they no longer had neighbours coming over to look after Li Ann and Taylor. Now the cupboard doors were flung open—Mac had definitely made a stop here on his way out. Vic quickly reached up and grabbed his own holsters and weapons—everything he'd been wearing on Canada day.

"Here," Li Ann said, coming into the kitchen. "Put this on." She handed him his bulletproof vest; they'd left the vests in the back of the closet in Taylor's room.

Vic immediately complied. "Did Mac take his?" he asked as he buckled up.

She grimaced. "No."

"Put yours on," Vic advised quickly. "Keep Taylor in the bathroom, it doesn't have windows."

"I _know_ how this works, Vic," she said. "_Go_."

Vic shoved his shoes onto his feet, and grabbed a jacket to pull on as he ran out the door. He didn't zip it, but it would do a reasonable job of hiding the Kevlar vest and the guns.

There were, in fact, three motorcycles parked all askew in the road in front of Sonny's house. Sonny's front door was ajar; damage on the frame showed that it had probably been kicked in. There were lights on in Sonny's living room, but the curtains were drawn so Vic couldn't see what was happening. He could hear thuds, though, and shouting.

He drew a gun, checked it, took a breath, and shoulder-checked the door. "Freeze!" he yelled as he moved into line of sight with the room.

There were four men in the room. Three standing: big men in black leather jackets, nobody Vic recognized from Sonny's crew. Sonny on his knees with his hands on his head, his nose and chin covered in blood. No sign of Mac.

Vic kept his gun steady on the closest guy. "Hands up!" he shouted. "Against the wall!"

The guy Vic was aiming at raised his open hands. But the guy furthest to the right, next to Sonny, darted a hand into his jacket.

"Freeze!" Vic shouted again, shifting his aim over to that guy. The guy, meanwhile, started to pull a gun. Vic saw it gleaming in his hand.

Vic realized that he had to shoot him, or die. His finger tightened on the trigger.

(the wind in the field in the dark the guard's pleading eyes the kick of the gun in his hand the hole in the forehead the body curling up in the fire the cabin burning burning burning)

Something kicked Vic in the chest like an angry horse. He fell backwards, uncontrolled, losing his grip on his gun and hitting his head on the floor. He saw stars, and the burning cabin, and he felt like he was going to throw up.

"Who the hell was _that_?" said somebody.

"Get his gun," said somebody else.

And then there were three quick gunshots. Somebody shouted. Somebody screamed. Somebody moaned. Two more shots. Vic wondered abstractly whether he was dead. His chest hurt.

"Vic!" It was Mac, shouting. Frantic. At Vic's side. "Are you hit?"

"Yes," Vic groaned. "No. I don't know." He rolled onto his knees as his stomach started heaving. And then he was vomiting on Sonny's living room floor, his hands braced in a puddle of blood.

Mac's hands were tugging at his jacket, peeling it away. "Oh thank _fuck_," Mac breathed. "You're wearing a vest."

"H...Haley?" Sonny choked out.

"I got her out the back," Mac said. "She's with Li Ann at our place."

Haley was Sonny's twelve-year-old granddaughter, Vic remembered. She'd been watching over the little kids at the Canada Day party.

So, she'd been here when the bikers broke in? And Mac had gotten her out. Oh _God_, if Mac hadn't run over here....

Vic found the room coming back into focus. The three intruding bikers were sprawled variously on the floor, each centred in his own spreading pool of blood. None of them were moving. Sonny was coming to his feet, using his shirtsleeve to try to wipe some of the blood away from his mouth and chin. He looked wide-eyed and shaky.

Mac was crouching next to Vic, with a very worried expression. He put a finger under Vic's chin, tilted his face up. "Look at me," he said. "Are you hurt?"

"Uh, no," Vic managed to decide. "I just got hit once, on the vest. It didn't go through." The back of his head was a little tender, too, but he didn't think he was concussed. Everything was perfectly clear now.

Perfectly, horribly clear. He hadn't been able to shoot the biker. He'd gone into some kind of flashback to Canada Day as soon as he'd tried.

"Jesus motherfucking Christ," Sonny said meanwhile, staring around the room in a daze. "You just mowed those bastards down, cold as anything. Who the fuck _are_ you?"

He was talking to Mac, Vic realized.

Mac gave a sort of sheepish grin, which might have been endearing under other circumstances but was pretty tonally inappropriate for the current room. "Ah, Hong Kong mafia," he said. "Former. Retired."

"Shee-it," Sonny said, and staggered over to his couch. Sat down in a manner that wasn't quite a collapse. Gazed around at the bodies some more. "You're a little young for retirement, aren't you?"

"Not from that life," Mac said.

Sonny shook his head slowly. "Never woulda guessed. You sure as hell know how to keep a secret. Jesus."

Vic choked slightly.

Mac patted him on the back and stood up. "Do you think anybody else is going to come for you tonight?" he asked Sonny.

"I didn't know anybody was gunning for me at all," Sonny said. "And look at their patches. They're Hells."

"The bikes have Quebec plates," Vic mentioned. He'd noticed it on the way in.

"You're allied with the Rock Machine, right?" Mac asked Sonny.

"Dunno if you could say _that_ exactly," Sonny said. "I got some personal friends in their crew. They leave me and mine alone."

"Well, you might wanna let your friends know about what happened here," Mac said. "I'd sort of appreciate it if you left my name out of it, though. Do you think you could maybe tell them you took care of things yourself?"

"Not sure anybody's gonna believe _that_," Sonny muttered, looking doubtfully around at the carnage.

"I can help you come up with a story that sounds good," Mac offered. "Meanwhile, we're going to have to get rid of these bodies."

"Right," Sonny said faintly.

"How about the river? The current's pretty fast, and it goes straight into the Georgian Bay."

Vic stirred himself to shake his head. "Bodies in the water tend to wash up on shorelines. And there are literally only three houses on Key River. They'd trace it back to us in a heartbeat."

"And who are _you_?" Sonny asked thoughtfully, staring at Vic now. "You ain't no Hong Kong mafia. You came in here pointing that gun like a cop."

"Maybe I used to be one," Vic said grimly. He sat back and wiped his soiled hands on his pyjama pants. "In a former life. It doesn't matter now. Mac's right, we have to hide the bodies. The ground's not frozen yet. Sonny, do you know somewhere we could bury them? Somewhere really out of the way."

Sonny nodded slowly. "I can think of a place or two."

"And the bikes," Vic reminded them. "We're going to have to do something about the bikes."

"I can call somebody to take _those_ away," Sonny said.

"You do that," Mac told him. "I'm going next door to let Li Ann know what's happening. Vic, can you move the bodies into Sonny's truck?"

Vic swallowed. Wiped his hands again. Nodded. "I'll need a tarp."

"What are you going to tell Li Ann?" Sonny asked, with an air of trepidation.

Mac gave a tight grin. "That everybody's fine and we need to bury some bodies. Don't worry. I won't say it in front of Haley." He looked around the room. "Maybe Haley had better stay at our place until you have the chance to mop?"

* * *

Sonny was seventy-five years old and clearly in a state of mild shock. Mac had severe lung damage.

Vic did most of the digging.

Vic's hands were blistered to hell and the sun had been up for hours by the time his hole was about as long and tall as he was. Mac clasped wrists with him and tugged him out of the hole, and then helped him roll the bodies in. Then Mac picked up the second shovel to start filling the dirt back in.

"You don't have to do that," Vic said.

"It's easier than the digging." Mac tossed another shovel full of dirt in. It covered up one of the dead bikers' faces. "I'll take a break if I get tired, I promise." He looked over at Vic. "You want me to wake up Sonny to help? Your hands are a mess."

Vic shook his head. "I'll be okay." He'd ripped some strips off his shirt to wrap around his palms a while ago. He wasn't really looking forward to peeling the strips _off_, but he could hold a shovel for now. "Do you have your inhaler?" he thought to ask.

"Uh huh," Mac said. "I got it when I went back to let Li Ann know where we were going."

"Good," Vic said. Tossed in a shovel of dirt. Thought about it for a moment. "Sorry," he said. "That was nagging, wasn't it? Of course you have your inhaler."

Mac made a slightly rueful face. "I would have forgotten it. Li Ann handed it to me."

"Oh." Vic paused in his shovelling for a moment to frown thoughtfully at Mac.

"I've never actually accused you of nagging, have I?" Mac asked. It sounded like a sincere question.

"Um, no," Vic admitted. "Not in those exact words. You do sometimes seem to get a little ... annoyed. When I get too protective."

"Sometimes I don't think that the things you worry about are actually that big of a deal," Mac shrugged. "It's frustrating if you're telling me _not_ to do something that I think is the right move. Like when you tried to tell me not to work for Sonny—I get why you felt that way, but I was right, wasn't I?"

Well, Mac had been right about them needing the money and having no other way to get it. But Vic couldn't exactly let that one go without commenting on the present situation. "We are currently standing in the woods burying three Hells Angels in an unmarked grave," he pointed out. "I think maybe I was right to worry?"

Mac's lips twitched as though Vic had said something funny. "The Hells Angels are dead because _we_ are giant badasses," he pointed out. "If we hadn't been involved, _Sonny_ would be dead, and maybe Haley too."

"True." Vic went back to shovelling.

"Anyway, the point is that I appreciate you looking after me. Li Ann too. I don't think of it as nagging," Mac said. "I know ... I'm _bad_ at that stuff. I don't mean to sabotage myself, but I do. Over and over. And since you've started looking out for me, my life has been so much better."

"Has it?" Vic asked, a bit doubtfully, tossing in another load of dirt. "You're not exactly in great shape right now."

Mac kind of shrugged. Paused to catch his breath. "Everything's relative," he said. "If it weren't for you, I'd definitely be dead."

"Speaking of which—" Vic interrupted himself, observing Mac's shallow panting with concern. "Hey, slow down, okay?"

Mac nodded, and eased himself down to sit on the forest floor. "See?" he said, with a hint of rueful laughter in his voice. "There you go. Protecting me. And I'm appreciating it. Observe me ... appreciating it." He pulled out his inhaler and took a dose.

"Yeah, you just sit there and watch for a bit." Vic dug his shovel deep into the loose mound of earth, and took an extra-big load. Threw it in. Felt the stinging in his hands. Decided to go back to normal loads. He'd get it done eventually; there really wasn't any hurry. "Anyway. Um. Thanks for saving _my_ life this morning."

Mac shrugged again, in an _it's what we do_ kind of way. "Hey, I was meaning to ask you about that," he said. "What the hell happened? You should've had the drop on those guys when you came in."

"Ah, yeah." Vic scooped up more dirt and tossed it in the hole. And again. And another one.

"Um, Vic?" Mac prompted.

"Remember when you thought I had PTSD about what happened on Canada Day?" He didn't look at Mac, he just looked at the pile of dirt. He kept shovelling. "And then I thought I was over it, when the nightmares stopped?"

"Uh huh?"

"I'm not over it." He stuck the shovel into the dirt pile and leaned on the handle, suddenly feeling the need for support. "When that biker drew on me and I tried to shoot him, I just—_fuck_, I don't even know what happened. I went _away_. Back to the field and the burning cabin. The dead guard. And I guess I didn't shoot the biker. He shot me, instead."

Mac stared at him. And then said about a paragraph's worth of _something_, in Cantonese.

Vic shook his head. "I didn't catch that?"

"Nothing," Mac said. "Just swearing. _Fuck_, Vic." He stood up and came over to Vic and then his arms were around him, holding him tight.

This wasn't the sort of thing that could be fixed with a hug. That didn't stop Vic from wishing the hug would never end. As long as Mac was holding him, he didn't have to worry about the rest of it.

"I owe you a big apology," Mac said after a while.

Vic shook his head, confused. "For what?"

"I gave you _such_ a hard time over shooting that guard," he said. "And then this morning I did basically the same thing."

"No you didn't." Vic frowned. "This morning was _combat_. Kill or be killed."

"The first three shots were combat," Mac said. "The last two were executions."

Vic shook his head. "I don't understand."

Mac looked grim. "I took the bikers _down_ in the first three shots. But two of them were still twitching. We could've called an ambulance, tried to save them. But if we _had_, it would've blown our cover all to hell. Put Taylor at risk. So I finished them off."

"Oh." Vic contemplated that for a moment. Looked carefully at Mac. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Yes," Mac said. "I did exactly what I had to do, to keep everybody safe. I feel _fine_ about it. And that's why I owe you an apology. I didn't think that the perimeter guard needed to die, that day—but the Director thought he did. You followed her call. Like you're supposed to. And this morning I made the same kind of call, so I guess I'd better stop pretending I'm better than that."

Vic hunched his shoulders, and shook his head. "It's not the same. Not really. Mac, I heard your shots. There was maybe a two-second delay between the third and the fourth. That's not a lot of time for cold-blooded calculation. Not even _remotely_ the same as walking up to a man who's tied up in a field and listening to him beg for his life before you kill him. Mac, I did something _terrible_. And I think I'm _glad_ that I'm not over it. I don't know if I _want_ to get over this. Who would I be, if I could?"

"Vic," Mac said, quietly and sounding worried, "that biker would have _killed_ you. The shot was directly over your heart. If you hadn't been wearing the vest..."

"I know." Vic turned away from Mac, and picked up the shovel. "I don't want to die. I'm glad I had the vest, I'm _really_ glad you shot these guys. I just ... I don't know. I don't know what to do about this." And he went back to shovelling dirt into the grave.

* * *

Eventually, the hole was filled in.

They spread the extra dirt around, rearranged the local leaf litter and fallen pine needles to cover the disturbed areas, and called it a day. It certainly wouldn't stand up to any kind of close inspection, but at least the presence of the grave wasn't blatantly obvious.

Then Vic tapped on the driver's side window of Sonny's truck, to wake him up. Sonny had been napping with the seat tilted back and his mouth hanging open, snoring loudly. Now he sat up and shook his head, staring at Vic for a moment in apparent confusion. Only for a moment, though. He looked over Vic's shoulder towards the gravesite, and his eyes focused. He opened the truck's door. "All done, then?"

"Uh huh," Vic said.

Sonny shrugged off Vic's jacket, which he'd been wearing as an extra layer while he slept, and handed it back to him.

"Hey, should we do something about your hands?" Mac asked Vic.

Vic shrugged. "Not much we can do till we get back to the safe house. Unless Sonny has a first-aid kit in his truck."

For a fraction of a second Mac's eyes widened in startled reaction, which made Vic's own heart jump because it signalled that he'd made some kind of mistake—but he didn't figure out what it was until he heard Sonny say, "Why did you just call your house 'the safe house'?"

Vic opened and closed his mouth without managing to say anything.

Mac put on an easy grin and turned back towards Sonny. "Huh?" he said. "Oh, he just meant the house is a safe place to look after his hands. We don't have to do it here."

But Sonny's eyes narrowed. "I'm not stupid, kid," he said. "I know what a safe house is." He contemplated Mac for a moment. "That 'retirement' story was bullshit. You're on the _run_, aren't you?"

"Well, this is about as far from Hong Kong as I could get without leaving the planet," Mac said, faintly.

He sounded so much like he was reluctantly confessing the truth that Vic felt several seconds of sheer our-cover-is-blown despair before he managed to fully parse what Mac had said. As soon as he did, he forced his face to go as neutral as possible. Mac was spinning them a _new_ cover story. Vic just had to stay out of the way.

"And Li Ann, and that little girl of yours?" Sonny asked.

Mac shrugged. "When Taylor was born, Li Ann and I knew that we had to get out. We couldn't bring up a daughter in that life."

"So, mister used-to-be-a-cop." Sonny said then, turning to Vic. "I guess you're supposed to be _protecting_ those kids? I'm not sure you're doing a very good job."

"Hey, he's doing a _great_ job," Mac said earnestly, clapping Vic on the back. "He's saved my life _lots_ of times."

"_Used_ to be a cop?" Sonny said again, putting his suspicion into the emphasis and staring warily at Vic.

Mac snorted. "If he were still a cop, would he be out here with us hiding bodies in an unmarked grave in the woods?"

"S'pose not," Sonny agreed, still giving Vic a bit of stink-eye.

"So anyway," Mac said, "you can understand why I'd really, _really_ like to keep my name out of whatever thing you've got going on here now."

"Don't want your in-laws to come calling?"

Mac nodded. "That's about the size of it."

"Well, we sure as hell don't want any _more_ trouble coming our way," Sonny said. "I'll do my best to keep your secrets, kid. I owe you, big-time."

* * *

Back at the safe house—which, Vic realized belatedly, he probably should've gotten used to thinking of as just 'the house' by now—Li Ann did first aid on Vic's hands while Mac watched Hayley play with Taylor out in the back yard. Meanwhile, Sonny did some serious house-cleaning over at his place. He came and collected Hayley when he was done, about an hour later.

At which point Vic, Mac and Li Ann gathered at the dining room table to debrief over a much-needed caffeine fix. It was two in the afternoon; they'd all been up since three a.m..

"We should get a boat," Mac said, and took a sip of coffee.

Vic blinked. "Sorry, wait, _what_? I thought we were talking about what to do about the biker war."

"Hells Angels, Chinese agents, whatever." Mac put down his mug. "I'm talking about escape routes. Right now the back door is a dead end."

Li Ann nodded. "A small motorboat. We could keep it right beside the river."

Vic looked at them both. "Uh, guys? We don't know how to drive a _boat_."

"Mac and I do," Li Ann said.

"Oh." Vic scratched his head. "Well, we can't _afford_ a boat."

"I bet Sonny could get us one," Mac said. "We just saved his life. We saved his _granddaughter_. He'll help us out any way he can. And now that he thinks we're on the run from the Hong Kong mob, he won't think it's weird that we're asking for one."

"We should put together a go bag," Li Ann said. "Keep it by the back door. If we install a hook we could keep it up out of Taylor's reach; then we could keep guns in it."

Vic shook his head, feeling rather perplexed. "You guys seriously think we should make our getaway by _boat_?"

"Only if we can't handle all the attackers, or get to the car," Mac said. "It's just good to have options."

"Actually, in terms of Taylor's safety, it might be better to plan on one of us heading to the boat immediately with her," Li Ann suggested. "The others can pin the attackers down in the house, hopefully, and cover the getaway."

Mac frowned. "I don't like the splitting-up part of that plan."

Li Ann shrugged. "We might not have a choice. But assuming we all survive, we could rendezvous at the Agency. Presumably if we're being attacked, there's no point in staying dark any longer."

"That's if we're attacked by the Chinese," Mac pointed out. "If we get attacked by the Hells Angels, we're still nicely undercover."

Li Ann sipped her coffee thoughtfully. "In that case, say we rendezvous in Tobermory. That's probably the best place to land the boat."

Vic squinted at her. "Tober-what-now?"

"It's the village at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula," Li Ann said. "Straight across the bay from here."

Vic shook his head. "And you know that how? Why?"

"The Director gave us a regional map when we moved here," Li Ann reminded him. "I memorized all the nearby communities, just in case. Didn't you?"

Vic felt suddenly like a kid who'd turned up without his homework done. "Uh, no?"

"Don't feel bad," Mac said comfortingly. "I didn't either."

Li Ann rolled her eyes. "Sweetie, I know _you_ can't memorize a map to save your life. We'll leave one in the go bag."

Mac looked like he was about to make some kind of retort, but then he froze and held up a finger—the _listen_ sign.

A vehicle was pulling up in front of their house.

"I've got Taylor," Mac said, already on his feet and moving to scoop her up from where she was playing on the living room floor.

Vic waited until Mac had Taylor out of the room, and until Li Ann had positioned herself along the wall off to the side of the door. Then he put a friendly-neighbour smile on his face, braced himself, and cautiously opened the door.

When he saw who was on the doorstep, he was hit by such a complicated rush of emotions that he stopped breathing for a moment. Shock. Relief. Hope. Disappointment. A fleeting, irrational but extremely intense wish that they'd had time to prepare an escape boat.

"Hello," said the Director. "May I come in?"


	18. Chapter 18

"Well, it's good to see that you're all intact," the Director said, gazing around. Mac had come into the living room and sat down on the couch with Taylor, who was playing with Gaga the doll. "And that Taylor appears happy and healthy. I have to say, when Mr. Dobrinsky had to intercept a 911 call from your next-door neighbour reporting gunfire last night, I was a little worried."

"Sonny called 911?" Vic asked, taken aback.

Li Ann gave a little shake of her head. Like Vic, she'd stayed on her feet. "It must have been Pat and George."

"And that's why you're here?" Vic asked. "I thought we couldn't have any contact with the Agency no matter what."

"Well, that whole situation with the Chinese and the Americans is _nearly_ wrapped up," the Director said. "Ideally, I would have loved it if you could have stayed out of trouble for _one_ more week—but frankly, considering your track record, I'm quite impressed that you made it this far."

"Hey, that incident last night was one hundred percent _not_ our fault," Mac said. "And by the way, apparently the Hells Angels are making some kind of move on Ontario. You might want to get somebody to look into that."

"Intriguing," the Director said, arching an eyebrow. "I'll ask you for details later. Are there any dead bodies I should know about?"

"Um, three," Vic said, wincing slightly as he rubbed the back of his neck with his bandaged hand. "Do you want to know where they're buried?"

The Director smiled. "Oh, I _always_ want to know where the bodies are buried."

* * *

They quickly filled her in on the most pertinent details: a sketchy biography of Sonny, the structure of his organization (such as it was), and the fact that Mac had been working for him. The attack last night had come out of the blue, so they didn't have much to say about it. Vic didn't mention how he'd frozen at the moment when he should have shot the biker. Mac gave him a quick, worried look, but didn't bring it up either.

"Hm. I think I'd like to have a little chat with Sonny before I leave," the Director said after all that.

"Sonny was really good to us," Mac said urgently, quickly. "He saved our asses more than once. You're not going to arrest him, are you?"

"Oh, I doubt it," the Director said. "I'm a big believer in supporting small local businesses over soulless international consortiums."

"You are?" Vic asked faintly, and rhetorically.

"FYI," Mac mentioned, "Sonny currently thinks that Li Ann and I are on the run from the Hong Kong mob, and that Vic's our shady ex-cop bodyguard. Slash lover."

The Director looked slightly amused. "Noted. All right. While I'm next door, you should pack anything that you want to bring back to Toronto. Geneviève and Huang are waiting in their car. I'll send them in to collect Taylor."

Mac and Li Ann both froze.

Well, they'd known as soon as the Director walked in that this was the end of their time with Taylor. But maybe they'd thought that they'd have more time to say goodbye. The four-hour drive to Toronto, at least.

"Wait," Vic said. It came out harsher than he meant it to. "Why didn't you tell us that Taylor was Li Ann and Mac's daughter?"

The Director looked at Vic. Looked at Mac and Li Ann. "So, you figured that out," she said, mildly. "How long did it take you?"

"Two days," Li Ann answered. Her expression was chilly. "Did you think that I wouldn't?"

The Director shrugged. "You never even saw her."

"She looks just like them," Vic pointed out.

"If you say so." The Director wrinkled her nose. "Frankly, I find that all humans under the age of six are basically indistinguishable from each other."

Li Ann smiled bleakly. "We thought about running away with her. You didn't worry about that?"

"I knew that was a danger," the Director admitted. "I hoped you wouldn't. Perhaps I'm even a bit surprised that you didn't."

"_Surprised_?" Mac repeated. His voice cracked on the word. He looked like he was barely holding it together, although his grip on Taylor was still gentle. "Then what the hell kind of head game _was_ this? Was it a test? Why did you _put_ us on this case?"

"Because I wanted Taylor to come out of this _alive_," the Director said. "And you're the best field agents I've ever known."

* * *

Geneviève and Huang came through the door timidly. When they saw Taylor, Huang froze and Geneviève gasped.

"She's so _big_!" Geneviève choked out, and then covered her mouth to hold in a sob.

Li Ann looked like a statue, but Mac unfolded himself from the couch with Taylor in his arms, and took a step towards her parents. "Look, Taytay," he said lightly. "it's Mama and Bàba! They've come to take you home."

"No!" Taylor declared, and hid her face against Mac's shoulder.

Geneviève looked instantly devastated. Huang touched her arm and said gently, "Remember, we expected this. It's been over four months." He turned to Mac, Vic and Li Ann. "Would it be all right if we stayed here for a few minutes, to give her time to adjust?"

"Yeah," Mac said easily, "No problem." He stayed where he was; Taylor peeked over his shoulder at her parents and then hid her face again.

"Ah, how—" Geneviève's voice broke, but she swallowed, took a breath, and tried again. "How has she been?"

"She's been great," Mac said. "Haven't you, Taytay?"

"She's gotten really good a building with blocks," Vic mentioned. "She's using a lot more words. Potty training is coming along really well. We stopped using diapers in the daytime just last week. There have been a few accidents, but..." He had to stop. The words were too disconnected from what he was feeling. "Did you know?" he asked instead, and he didn't _mean_ for it to come out as an accusation but somehow it did. "That Mac and Li Ann were her real parents?"

"Biological parents," Mac corrected quickly, with a sharp warning look at Vic.

Huang regarded Vic evenly for a moment, and glanced at Mac and Li Ann. Took his wife's hand. "We always knew that her birth mother was an agent," he said. "We'd been told that the father was in prison in Hong Kong."

Mac gave a faint ironic smile. "I was."

"We always assumed it was her father who was Chinese," Geneviève mentioned. "But when we saw the two of you, the night Taylor was taken—"

"We both guessed," Huang jumped in. "When we talked it over afterwards, we felt quite sure. But when we asked your Director about it, she was evasive."

"That sounds like her," Vic muttered.

"She wouldn't tell us where you were," Geneviève added. "We had to trust..." She pressed her hand over her mouth again and squeezed her eyes shut. It was clearly taking all her effort not to burst into tears.

"We are very grateful to you," Huang said, in an exaggeratedly-formal tone that Vic suspected was his own equivalent of pressing his hand to his mouth and holding in sobs, "for keeping our daughter safe and awaiting our return."

"Mac and I were both adopted, when we were children," Li Ann said quietly. "We always understood that she belongs with you."

Mac looked around, and then seemed to come to a decision. He lowered himself to sit on the floor, still holding Taylor, and motioned everyone else to sit down too. "Taytay," he said, "I think that Mama and Bàba would like to meet Gaga."

"The doll," Vic whispered in response to Geneviève and Huang's puzzled looks. The naked, red-haired Cabbage Patch doll was even more grubby and battered than when Sonny had first gifted her to Taylor; Vic found himself hoping that Geneviève and Huang wouldn't judge their parenting on the basis of the state of Gaga.

Taylor released Mac's neck so that she could grip her doll two-handed, but she stayed on Mac's lap, looking suspiciously over at her parents. Geneviève and Huang were sitting cross-legged, now, and clearly trying to look much calmer than they felt.

"Oh, you know what, Taytay?" Mac said. "I think Gaga's feeling sick again. I think she's going to need hugs to feel better."

Taylor looked up at Mac and widened her eyes in exaggerated shock. "Oh no!" she said. "Gaga is _sick_!" She shook the doll and made her extremely unconvincing fake cough: "Kah! Kah!" Then she squeezed Gaga tightly. "She need hugs to feew bettah!"

Vic reflected, a little ruefully, that it definitely said something about the state of their household that this had turned into one of Taylor's favourite games.

"Need hugs!" Taylor declared, holding Gaga out to Mac.

Mac tenderly hugged Gaga and kissed her forehead. "Feel better, Gaga," he said, and handed her back to Taylor. "Now make sure Gaga gets hugs from _everybody_."

Suddenly realizing what Mac was up to, Vic found himself impressed.

Taylor brought Gaga to Vic first, and he gave her a quick hug and kiss. Taylor went to Li Ann next. Li Ann's face was still nearly expressionless as she gave the required hug and kiss to the doll.

Then Taylor went to Huang. "Gaga need hugs, Bàba!" she said, holding out the doll.

Huang took Gaga carefully, and hugged and kissed her the same way that Mac, Vic and Li Ann had. "There," he said, handing her back to Taylor. "Now bring her to Mama."

Taylor grinned, and ran over to Geneviève. "Mama hug Gaga!"

Geneviève took the doll and squeezed her tight, taking a shaky breath. Then she said to Taylor, "Taytay, may _I_ have a hug?"

Taylor hesitated for a moment, looking uncertain. But then she threw herself at Geneviève and wrapped her arms tight around her neck. "Taytay hug Mama!" she declared joyfully.

Vic could see tears spilling out of Geneviève's closed eyes, as Geneviève gently wrapped her arms around her daughter.

After that, Taylor was over her shyness with her parents. She bubbled over with enthusiasm, showing them every one of her toys one by one. Not that it took very long—they never had been able to afford to buy her very much.

And then the Director let herself back in. "I think that's all sorted out," she said, glancing back in the direction of Sonny's house. "Are you all ready to go?"

"Uh, we didn't actually pack yet," Vic realized. "And we're definitely going to need a nap before we drive back to Toronto. We've all been up since three in the morning."

"And we should say good-bye to Sonny," Mac added. "And to Pat and George. We'd better tell them we're, like, moving to Toronto to look for work, or something. They'd find it weird if we just disappeared without saying anything."

"We're ready to go," Huang said. Taylor was in his lap at the moment; he'd been reading _The Very Hungry Caterpillar_ to her when the Director came in. "I'd like to leave now so that we can have Taylor home for supper."

The Director shrugged. "That's fine. We all have our own cars. Vic, Mac, Li Ann—you can take the rest of the day off. Drive home whenever you're ready. I'll want you in the briefing room tomorrow morning at nine a.m.."

"Wait," Li Ann said. She headed off towards the bedrooms, and came back a few moments later with Taylor's diaper bag, and an armful of Taylor's clothes. "You might as well take these."

Geneviève nodded, and took the items from Li Ann. Li Ann then went to the closet and got Taylor's jacket and shoes, and brought them over to Huang. "And you'll need these. And I guess you'll need the car seat, it's in the back of our car..."

Huang shook his head. "We brought our own." He took the jacket. "Give me your arm, Taytay."

Taylor dodged his grip and dashed over to Li Ann. "Mommy do!"

Li Ann winced. "Sorry. We had to teach her to call us Mommy and Daddy. So that nobody would be suspicious."

"It's all right," Geneviève said. "We understand."

Li Ann put Taylor's jacket on her, and then her shoes. "There you go," she said, giving Taylor an outwardly-calm smile. "Now you can go in the car with Mama and Bàba."

Geneviève picked Taylor up. This time, Taylor snuggled happily into her grip and put her arms around her mother's neck. "Thank you," Geneviève said, her gaze taking in the three agents in turn. "What you've done for us—it means _everything_."

"Ah—" Mac said quickly, tightly, as the Bouchard-Wongs turned to go. "Wait. Um, do you think we can see her again? Sometime? Just, like, to visit? Since we all know about each other now."

Geneviève and Huang exchanged a quick, awkward look.

"I don't think that would be wise," Huang said.

"It's just—you've done a wonderful job looking after her," Geneviève added. "Clearly. But your lives ... the risks of your jobs—"

"We've been in contact with the Agency for years, we know the sorts of things that field agents do," Huang chimed in.

"That's not something she should be exposed to," Geneviève finished.

"We wouldn't take her to _work_," Mac said, sounding appalled.

"No." Huang's voice was firm. "It's not possible." He put a hand on Geneviève's elbow, and they turned together to leave.

"I'm sorry," the Director said, hesitating before following them out. "I suppose maybe you'd like a little time alone now. Don't forget, though—briefing room, nine o'clock tomorrow morning."

* * *

They lay down all together on what had been Taylor's bed. Li Ann was in the middle.

"How much money do we have?" she asked.

"In the envelope?" Vic asked. "About five hundred dollars."

"That's not enough to run away on," Mac said quietly.

"It's a start," Li Ann said. "Let's start working on our plan tomorrow. I can't think straight right now."

"Weren't you the one who said that we _couldn't_ run away?" Vic asked.

"I said there were serious obstacles," Li Ann pointed out. "That's why we need a good plan." She squeezed her eyes shut, and tears spilled out. "But I can't do this anymore."

"Shhh," Mac soothed, holding her. His cheeks were wet, too. "I know."

And Vic put his arms around them both. "Whatever happens," he said, "we've got each other. I promise, it's going to be okay."

* * *

They had a quick check-in with the Director in the morning, and then she sent them to be processed. They'd never had such an extended mission before; the protocols were unfamiliar. Vic had a brief medical check-up and got the dressings on his hands fixed, and then was sent to meet with a stone-faced secretary who typed as fast as Vic could talk. It turned out to be an impressively efficient way to make a very long report. The secretary didn't just transcribe; he also asked insightful questions to keep Vic's thoughts organized and on track. In the space of a couple of hours, Vic managed to give a pretty thorough accounting of everything that had happened since they left the Agency (only leaving out a thing or two, the memory of the perimeter guard's dead eyes, the haunting of his dreams—the secretary asked him what had _happened_ but never asked him how he _felt_).

Afterwards, he was told that he was free, but should stick around the Agency until the Director called for him. He asked where Mac and Li Ann were, and was told they were still in Medical.

He went to the gym, ran around the track for a while. Had a shower. Felt hungry. Ate a shrink-wrapped sandwich from the vending machine in the break room. Wandered into Dobrinsky's office.

"Oh, hey sport," Dobrinsky said, looking up from his computer. "How was the babysitting gig?"

"Intense," Vic said.

Nothing quite felt real, now that he was back at the Agency.

"I hear you somehow ended up in the middle of a biker war?"

"Only a little," Vic said, and wandered away again.

He went to Records, found Nathan. Asked to see their files on the Sudbury drug trade.

It turned out they did have files on Sonny. Sparse, but going back to the sixties. Apparently Sonny had told them the truth, that day on the back porch—he'd never killed anybody, never been implicated in any violence at all. The sticker on his file was green: no need to watch.

Finally, Vic's cell phone rang. "Get back to the briefing room," the Director said. "We're ready for you."

* * *

Mac and Li Ann were already at the table. Vic joined them, and as soon as he sat down, the Director emerged from her office above. She was dressed in a fairly sombre pants suit. She took a seat on the opposite side of the table and steepled her fingers.

"Let's start with Mac," she said.

Mac straightened up and put on one of the grins he wore when he was nervous. "Is this about the drug-dealing?" he asked. "I figured it wasn't _technically_ criminal, since it was for the sake of the mission."

"And you were right," the Director said. "In fact, I'm quite impressed at your resourcefulness."

Mac's grin turned sincere. "Hear that, Vic?" he said. "My _resourcefulness_."

"Uh huh." Vic squeezed Mac's hand under the table.

"But unfortunately you've failed your physical assessment," the Director said. "Miserably."

"Um?" Mac looked abruptly worried. "You know I only got out of the hospital two and a half weeks ago. I need some more time to get back in shape."

The Director shook her head. She looked regretful, and surprisingly tender. "I am so sorry, Mac," she said. "But you have permanent, severe lung damage. There's no way you can go back in the field. You're going to be medically retired."

"Wait—_retired_?" Mac repeated, looking stunned. "That's a thing that can happen? You'd let me _go_? No tricks, no strings?"

"What, did you think I'd take you out back and have you shot when you couldn't work anymore?" the Director asked. "We haven't done that since the McCarthy era."

Vic _really_ hoped she was joking about that last part. She did have a dark sense of humour sometimes.

"What about Vic and Li Ann?" Mac asked.

"We'll get to them in a moment," the Director said. "I do need to warn you that you will not be _entirely_ free of strings. As a former agent, you obviously know far too many state secrets to be allowed out in the wild completely unsupervised. We'll keep tabs on you. With a light touch, I promise."

"You'll keep bugging my apartment?"

"Lighter than that. I might just ask you to check in, once in a while. And by the way, I'm afraid you'll lose the apartment. And the car. They're Agency property."

Now Mac looked worried again. "You're putting me out on the _street_?"

"You can move in with me," Vic said quickly, before Mac could start to panic. That should have been obvious—Mac had been basically living with Vic _already_—but Vic guessed that Mac might have some deep-rooted fears about ending up homeless again.

"You do qualify for a small pension," the Director went on. "It's enough to live on, if you live fairly simply. And you're free to supplement it with any income you're able to come by. Of course I'll provide you with documentation giving you a clean, solid identity—Canadian citizenship and so on. Do you want to keep the name Mac Ramsey, or would you prefer to start fresh with a different one?"

Mac blinked. "My real name is fine."

"Ah, we had trouble finding work in Sudbury because we had no histories, no references," Vic jumped in to point out. "That's how Mac ended up working for bikers."

"Hm," the Director said. "I owe you an apology for that. The Key River safe house was a hasty setup, and I honestly didn't expect the situation to last for more than a month. Things became very ... _delicate_, for a while. Anyway, you won't end up stuck like that again. I can give you references for any job you want to pretend to have had. Within reason," she added, quellingly.

Mac sat back in his chair, wide-eyed. "So ... that's it?" he said. "I walk out of here, I'm done with this place?"

"You can have a week to clear out your apartment," the Director said. She stood up and leaned slightly across the table, holding out her hand. Mac accepted the handshake. He looked a little dazed. "It's been a pleasure, Mr. Ramsey," she said. "You did some very good work for us. I will certainly miss having access to your skills. But on a personal note, I am as delighted as I am astonished to be able to retire you alive."

"Ah, thanks," Mac said faintly.

The Director sat back down and turned to Li Ann. "Li Ann," she said, "you also failed your physical. Not as badly as Mac, mind you. But still. I'm afraid you no longer qualify for the field."

Li Ann's lips pressed tightly together. She must've been expecting it, though—that was her only reaction.

"In your case," the Director went on, "I have been cleared to offer you a choice. You may take retirement, the same as Mac. In fact your pension would be slightly higher, since you did make it past the two-year mark. Or," she paused, watching Li Ann carefully, "you could accept a promotion. Out of the field."

"Into ... what?" Li Ann asked, looking cautious.

"Into a position the existence of which you currently don't have the security clearance to know about, so I can't give you a lot of details. But I think you would find it interesting, satisfying work. You don't have to decide today," she added. "I can give you forty-eight hours to think about it."

"Wait, how come _she_ gets offered a promotion?" Mac asked. "You didn't offer _me_ one."

The Director rolled her eyes. "Would you want one?"

"No," Mac said. "But it would've been nice to get to turn it down."

"If I stay," Li Ann jumped in, "and Mac leaves, what would that mean? Could I stay in contact with him?"

Mac gave her a startled look.

"Yes, yes, don't worry about that," the Director said. "You can certainly continue your whatever-it-is with him if you want to. It's actually very convenient, since he's automatically cleared to know about the existence of the Agency."

Li Ann nodded slowly. "I'd like to think about it and get back to you," she said.

The Director smiled. "Wonderful." And then she turned to Vic. "Victor, you failed your psych assessment."

It took Vic a moment to parse what the Director had said. He knew he hadn't had any problems with his physical, and he'd just been starting to really think, with considerable unease, about what it would be like to go back to working in the field without Mac and Li Ann. "Wait, what?" he said. "I didn't even _have_ a psych assessment."

"Sure you did," the Director countered. She tapped her fingers on the table. "I read Mac's report, and I assessed your psyche."

"You— Mac's—" Vic sputtered, and turned to Mac. "You told her what happened yesterday?"

Mac didn't look at all apologetic. "You could have been _killed_," he said.

"I'm afraid an agent who can't shoot people isn't much use to me," the Director murmured.

"I can get _over_ that," Vic said.

"I'm sure you could," the Director said. "We have a whole _department_ dedicated to that sort of thing. Dr. Fry used to work for them, do you remember him?"

Vic blinked. "Ah, I sure remember the droogs."

The Director leaned in. "I'm offering you a very nice gift horse, Vic. Maybe you should stop examining its teeth."

"G- gift horse?" Vic stuttered. He did not feel like he was following this conversation very well at all.

"Medical retirement," Li Ann inferred. "She's offering you the chance to get out. Along with Mac."

The Director nodded, and smiled. "I _knew_ you were the smart one."

"Oh my God." Vic felt ... _stunned_. "And my criminal record?"

"Expunged." The Director waved her hand in the air. "You've earned it. And you were innocent in the first place anyway."

"You guys," Mac said faintly, looking at Vic and Li Ann in turn. "We're _free_."

* * *

They all left the Agency together, and went back to Vic's place.

Then they sat around his dining room table and stared at each other.

"Can we get drunk?" Mac asked.

Vic honestly wanted to say yes. But he knew that wasn't a good idea, particularly for Mac. "How about we have tea," he suggested. "And order pizza." All of the perishable food in his apartment had gone off during his four month absence—horrifically, in some cases. He'd cleared it out last night but hadn't had the chance to re-stock.

"I'll make the tea," Li Ann said, and headed for the kitchen.

"Li Ann!" Mac said, and trailed after her.

Vic called his usual pizza place and put in an order. Thought about how nice it was to be able to do that. How _easy_.

"What are you going to _do_?" Mac was asking Li Ann, in the kitchen.

"I'm going to use the Jade Tips tea," she said.

"That's not what I mean."

"I know." She finished filling the kettle and put it on the stove, just as Vic joined them in the kitchen.

"We were going to run away together," Mac reminded her.

Li Ann hunched her shoulders. "Well, now we don't have to."

"I know," Mac said. "Which is _great_. Right? So I don't understand why you're suddenly thinking of _staying_ at the Agency even though you don't _have_ to."

"I'm _thinking_ about it," Li Ann said. "I haven't decided yet."

"_Yesterday_ you said we should make escape plans."

Li Ann sighed, and took Mac's hand. "I was very upset. I'd just lost Taylor again. I didn't want to lose you again too."

"I wouldn't have left without you, Li Ann," Mac said, looking a bit shocked that she might think that he would.

"I _know_," she said. "That's the problem. Vic and I were afraid that you wouldn't survive much longer, working for the Agency."

"Me?" Mac asked, looking perturbed. "We were _all_ at risk, any time we went out on a mission."

"Well, that's true," Li Ann said. "But anyway, now you're out of it. You're safe. And this other position the Director's talking about for me—if it's not in the field, I assume any physical danger is minimal."

"It's still _working_ for the _Agency_," Mac said.

She nodded, and bit her lip. Looked up at him. "I _like_ working for the Agency," she said. "I always have. I know you hate it—hated it—and I understand why. The Director should never have coerced you into working for her by threatening your life, that was a terrible way to recruit you. You must have always felt so vulnerable and unsafe around her."

Mac was actually looking like he felt little vulnerable and unsafe right _now_, so Vic stepped closer and tucked an arm around his waist. "We all know that there's some seriously shady shit going on at the Agency," Vic said. "We also know that the Director—_our_ director, I mean—tends to push things in a better direction. Like the time some other director sent the Cleaners after Karen Ruby and our director sent us in to save her. I think by offering Li Ann this promotion, the Director's looking to develop an ally. Someone to help push her agenda. And I think that if Li Ann gains real power at the Agency, she will _definitely_ make it better. Not that I'm saying you _should_ take the job," he added quickly, to Li Ann. "That's your choice. I'm just saying, I'll back you either way. And Mac will too—" he squeezed Mac tighter around the waist, "—as soon as he has time to get used to the idea."

Mac acknowledged that with a weak smile.

The kettle started to whistle. Li Ann wrapped a pot-holder around the handle and took it off the stove. Poured the water into the teapot, looking pensive. "Thank you," she said to Vic. "It's a lot to think about."

* * *

Li Ann left after they'd had the pizza. She said that she needed some time alone to consider her options. They agreed to meet the following morning at their favourite diner on Spadina, for breakfast.

Vic and Mac had sex. It was nice, but kind of subdued. Mac definitely wasn't 100% into it. Not that he showed any _reluctance_—quite the opposite—it just felt like he wasn't all _there_.

Not that that was surprising. Vic missed Taylor too.

"So what are we going to do now?" Vic asked once they'd cleaned up, and were cuddling.

"Um, sleep I guess?" Mac said. "I think it's too late to watch a movie."

"No, I mean—what are we going to do with our _lives_?"

Mac shrugged. "We don't need to work."

Vic had roughed out the calculations already. Putting their pensions together—with seven years of active service, Vic's was significantly higher than Mac's—they could afford to keep Vic's apartment, and to buy groceries. The Director had sent them to HR to clarify the details on their way out; it turned out that they'd get to keep their health insurance, too, which meant that the cost of Mac's medications wouldn't be a worry. So they could survive.

But, "I think we do," Vic said. "What the hell else would we do—sit around the apartment all day, watching kung fu flicks? That would get old fast."

"What else _can_ we do?" Mac countered. "The HR guy said I should try applying for _disability_ benefits."

Mac had looked like somebody had just punched him, when the HR guy said that. "He thought you were going to be trying to make it on your pension alone," Vic pointed out. "He didn't know that you'd be living with me."

"The point," Mac said, rolling over so that his back was to Vic, "is that he thought I was _useless_ now."

Oof. Vic spooned Mac, hugging him, and kissed his ear. "All the HR guy knew was that you were being medically retired with level four paperwork. The _Director_ doesn't think you're useless. She offered you references for whatever job you decide to go for. And I _know_ you're not useless. You've had those injuries since Canada Day. Meanwhile you did more than your fair share of looking after an extremely active two-year-old, you single-handedly financially supported our household for the past two months, _and_ you rescued me, Sonny and Haley from three Hells Angels assassins."

Mac rolled over again, bringing him nose-to-nose with Vic. "Oh," he said, his face lighting up. "You're right. I'm _awesome_."

"Uh huh," Vic said, and kissed him. "So let's maybe give ourselves a few days to lounge around and watch kung fu flicks. And then let's start figuring out what we're going to do with the rest of our lives."


	19. Chapter 19

"I'm going to take the job," Li Ann said the next morning, over blueberry waffles.

Under the table, Vic squeezed Mac's hand. At the same time, he smiled at Li Ann and raised his water glass to her. "Congratulations," he said.

Li Ann clinked her glass against his, nodding her thanks. "I thought a lot about what you said last night," she added. "About changing the system from within. That's the _only_ way the Agency's going to change. We know it doesn't have any true governmental oversight. The public doesn't know about it. And we know it's had a lot of morally bankrupt people working for it in the past. Dr. Fry, Mr. Happy, Nicholas Love, Pucci ... But the behaviour of the Agency is a function of the people inside it who call the shots. If I can get in there and _be_ one of those people, I can help to ensure that the Agency's priority really is the _protection_ of the innocent. The way we always thought it was supposed to be."

"Li Ann..." Mac swallowed, took a breath, and smiled. "I think you'll be great."

* * *

After breakfast, they all got in Vic's truck and drove to the U-Haul depot to buy some cardboard boxes.

Li Ann would get to keep her Agency apartment. Vic's place, of course, didn't even belong to the Agency—he'd been there since his first year working as a cop. His parents had kept the rent paid up while he'd been in jail. So Mac was the only one who had to move, and obviously Li Ann and Vic had offered to help him pack.

"I don't think we'll need this many boxes," Mac said doubtfully, looking at the stack of twenty that Vic was tossing into the back up his pickup.

"Actually we'll probably need to come back for at least this many again," Vic said. "You always need more than you think." It had been a long time since he'd helped anyone move apartments, but he sure remembered that much.

Anyway, it was nice that he had the truck for helping with the move. Unlike his apartment, it _was_ Agency property, and he'd have to return it—but the Director had told him that he could keep it until the end of the week.

He wouldn't be able to afford to get a new one, at least not right away. But he didn't really need one, in the city. His apartment was only a ten minute walk from the nearest subway station, and there were buses and streetcars running even closer.

Back at Mac's apartment, Vic quickly found out why Mac had been skeptical about the number of boxes.

"No, don't pack any of that," Mac said when Vic opened a kitchen cupboard. "It all came with the apartment."

And when Vic started to pack some of the decorations that were sitting around: "Nope, those came with the apartment too."

And the towels from the bathroom: "Also came with the apartment. I should probably wash them, though."

Even the bed linens, apparently, had been furnished with the place.

"Is _anything_ here actually yours?" Vic asked, staring around.

Mac shrugged. "The stereo. The CDs. And I guess the clothes? Technically they belong to the Agency, but they probably don't want them back."

"Jesus." Vic went over and wrapped his arms around Mac, and held him tight.

"Uh, Vic?" Mac asked, after a moment. "Not that I don't always love to get hugs, but this is getting a bit weird. What are you doing?"

"Convincing myself you're not going to blow away in a strong wind," Vic muttered. "I never realized how _untethered_ you were."

Mac had four boxes worth of stuff, it turned out. Mostly clothes.

"I _told_ you it was too many boxes," he said.

"Well, it won't be hard to fit you into my place," Vic observed. "Okay, if I take two boxes, we can do this in one trip down to the truck."

"Hang on," Li Ann said. Her cell phone was ringing. "Hello?" she answered it. Then her eyes went wide. "Oh. Yes. _Yes_, absolutely. Yes, they're right here with me. I'll tell them. Five thirty, got it. Can we bring anything? Okay. See you then." She flipped the phone closed, and stared at it.

"What was that?" Vic prompted after a moment, when she didn't say anything.

"It was Geneviève," Li Ann said, faintly. "She and Huang have invited us to dinner at their house."

* * *

They all dressed up for the occasion. Mac was clearly very happy to be back in one of his good suits—as Macdonald Xian, he hadn't owned anything dressier than a long-sleeved t-shirt. Vic wasn't comfortable in suits the way Mac was, but he wore a button-down shirt with a sport jacket, and a pair of dark, nearly-new jeans. Li Ann wore one of her slightly masculine but not-quite-drag outfits: a black suit with a long, tapered jacket over a high-collared red shirt, and a bolo tie with a silver-and-turquoise clasp.

They stopped at the LCBO to pick up an expensive bottle of wine. Vic winced at the price, a reflex from their several months of living on a tight budget. But Mac and Li Ann were insistent that they needed to make a good impression, and anyway they were splitting the cost three ways.

The Bouchard-Wongs lived in a large house in North York. Vic rang the doorbell, because Mac and Li Ann both looked too nervous to do it. He figured the doorbell was redundant, anyway; he'd spotted no less than four security cameras surveying the doorstep and the front yard.

Geneviève answered the door wearing a long white dress with soft, flowing fringes, so it looked like Mac and Li Ann had had the right impulse about dressing up. "Welcome," she said, and offered each of them kisses on both cheeks as they passed the threshold. Mac and Li Ann returned them smoothly; Vic, slightly awkwardly. Geneviève took their coats to hang up, and the wine, and ushered them inwards. Past the foyer they were in a high-ceilinged entrance hall with a curving staircase leading up to the second floor, and off to the right was an elegantly-furnished living room. So far, Vic saw no sign of Taylor's presence. "I'm so glad you were able to come," Geneviève said. "Dinner is just about ready; please let me show you to the dining room."

The places were already set at the large dining table. It could seat twelve, but it was set for five—plus a high chair. The high chair was a fancy wooden one, and nicely matched the other chairs and the table. But the plastic bowl and spoon set out on its tray were pure Ikea.

Vic saw Mac and Li Ann's gazes lingering on the high chair too, hope lighting up in their eyes. When Geneviève had invited them to dinner, it hadn't been clear whether they'd be seeing Taylor. But based on the high chair, it looked like they would.

"Please, sit," Geneviève urged them. "Huang's just finishing up in the kitchen."

"Is there anything we can do to help?" Vic asked.

Geneviève looked briefly surprised, and then nodded. "Actually, it would be great if you could help carry things in. Come with me?"

So they all trailed after her, down a short hall to a large, well-appointed kitchen. And here, finally, were real signs of Taylor: a half dozen crayon scribble-drawings proudly displayed on the stainless steel fridge.

And Taylor herself, on the floor in the back corner by the dishwasher, playing with Gaga.

Vic heard Li Ann take a sharp breath, and catch herself.

"Is it okay if we go and say hi to her?" Mac asked Geneviève, quietly. Vic was extremely impressed at his restraint. But then, Mac had always been skilful in dealing with people—and it was really important, right now, not to spook Geneviève and Huang. They'd lost their daughter for four months; they hadn't known for sure that they'd ever see her again; they'd found her calling another couple 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' when they got her back. Back at the safe house, they'd told Mac and Li Ann very firmly that they'd have no further contact with Taylor.

And yet they'd invited Li Ann, Mac and Vic over for a family dinner tonight, for reasons still known only to themselves.

Geneviève, meanwhile, seemed to be considering Mac's question. Finally she nodded, and gave a smile that seemed slightly forced. "Yes, you should," she said.

Taylor hadn't actually looked up yet. When Mac said "Hi, Taytay!" she did. She instantly lit up in a huge grin. "Daddy!" she exclaimed. She stood up, dropping her doll, and went running full tilt into Mac's legs.

"We'd appreciate," Geneviève said, a bit tightly, "if you would teach her to start calling you by your given names, instead." Huang, standing at the counter transferring vegetables into a serving dish, nodded his agreement.

"We can do that," Mac promised a little breathlessly. "No problem." He'd already picked Taylor up, and was giving her a big hug and a nose nuzzle.

A moment later, the _implication_ of Geneviève's request hit Vic—that Mac and Li Ann would be seeing Taylor _again_. Repeatedly.

"Mommy!" Taylor was calling out joyfully, meanwhile, and squirming directly from Mac's arms into Li Ann's.

"Mommy's name is Li Ann," Mac said, getting straight to work on Geneviève's instructions. "Can you say 'Li Ann', Taytay?"

Taylor squinted at him in a slightly puzzled way, but obediently parroted, "Yee-na."

"Hm, that's gonna take a bit of work," Vic observed.

"Vikah hugs!" Taylor demanded immediately, and flung herself out of Li Ann's arms.

Vic caught her in mid-air. And when he felt her little arms squeezing his neck, somehow everything got blurry for a moment, and his eyes felt wet.

* * *

Dinner was roast goose, with stir-fried Chinese vegetables on the side. Geneviève and Huang sat on either side of the high chair, and took turns serving Taylor a little bit of food at a time. Vic, Mac and Li Ann were lined up opposite them; the table was just wide enough to make it feel a little distant. They could pass things across, but they had to lean over to do it.

"This is delicious," Mac said, swallowing a bite of the goose. "Huang did the cooking?"

Huang nodded. "It's my mother's recipe. I was born in Hong Kong; my family came to Canada when I was fourteen. I understand that you were raised in Hong Kong, yourselves?" he added, indicating Mac and Li Ann.

"Ah, just as teenagers," Mac said, looking a little wary. "What _did_ the Director tell you about us?"

"Quite a bit," Geneviève murmured.

"We really appreciate you inviting us to your home," Li Ann jumped in. "We didn't expect this."

Geneviève took a sip of wine. "When we first adopted Taylor," she said, contemplatively, "our intention was to pretend that she was our own natural-born daughter. We were delighted when your Director found her for us—it was such a stroke of luck, finding a baby who would _look_ like she could be ours."

"But we did quite a bit of reading about adopted children, after we became her parents," Huang continued in turn. "It gradually became clear to us that lying to our daughter about something so important could badly damage our relationship with her, if ever she found out. And we realized that it was nearly inevitable that she _would_ find out, someday. Genetic testing is becoming more and more ubiquitous, for instance—by the time she's an adult, establishing a genetic history could very well be part of a standard doctor's visit."

"So we decided to be open with her," Geneviève picked up the story. "At least about the fact that she was adopted. But we planned to tell her that we had no idea who the birth parents were."

"Which was true," Huang added, "effectively. Until we met you."

Li Ann looked thoughtful, and sipped at her wine. "Two days ago, you said that you wouldn't let us see Taylor again. What changed?"

A slight movement on Mac's part and Li Ann's mostly-suppressed wince let Vic infer that Mac had just kicked Li Ann under the table. But Vic thought that Li Ann was right, that it was safe to ask. Huang and Geneviève didn't strike him as excessively flighty people—whatever their reasons had been for changing their minds about forbidding contact with Taylor, they weren't going to reverse course again just because Li Ann asked the question.

"Your Director paid us a visit last night," Geneviève said. "She explained a great many things to us, and furnished us with a detailed account of the rescue mission and your subsequent time at the Key River house."

Huang nodded. "And she let us know that you are no longer field agents, as of yesterday. That ... makes a great deal of difference."

Geneviève cut a slice of goose into small pieces, and put them on Taylor's currently-empty plate. Taylor happily started stuffing them in her mouth. "Furthermore," Geneviève added, "we understand that you were retired from the field _because_ of injuries you sustained while rescuing Taylor. The debt we owe you for that is very great."

"You don't, actually," Mac said. "It was our job. And even if it wasn't, we would have done it anyway. And frankly, I'm _thrilled_ to be retired."

Vic shot Mac a puzzled, warning look.

"I love Taylor," Mac went on. "We all do. But you shouldn't give us access to her like it's some kind of _commodity_, to pay back your debts. Let us see her if you think we're _good_ for her. Otherwise, don't."

This time, Li Ann kicked Mac under the table.

But Geneviève gave a small nod, taking in what Mac had said. "In fact, we do think you're good for her," she said. "She thrived under your care. It was so much more than we could have hoped for, under such difficult circumstances."

"That's why—" Huang started.

But Geneviève stalled him with a hand on his arm (too dignified for a kick under the table, apparently). "Wait," she said. "First, let's make it clear to them—we welcome their continued presence in Taylor's life. Whether they accept our offer or not."

"Offer?" Mac repeated. Li Ann sat up straighter, looking alert and wary.

"We both have very demanding jobs," Geneviève said. "We sometimes work sixty, seventy hours a week. We've always had live-in nannies to help us care for Taylor."

"The young woman who was with us at the time of Taylor's kidnapping was killed by the agents who took Taylor," Huang told them, looking grim.

Geneviève nodded. "As you can imagine, we feel ... _unspeakably_ terrible about it. The looks on that poor girl's parents' faces, when we had to tell them what happened..." She took a drink, looking like she needed it. "How could we possibly hire another nanny, after that?"

"We don't expect another attack," Huang said. "But we didn't expect the first one, either."

"We'd like Taylor to have a full-time bodyguard, from now on," Geneviève said. "And, well ... frankly she does still need a nanny."

_Oh_. Vic started to see where this was going.

So did Mac, apparently. "You're offering to _hire_ us? To look after Taylor and protect her?"

"You've already proven your abilities," Huang said.

"There's a small suite of rooms connected to the nursery," Geneviève said. "Well, just a bedroom, a small sitting room, and a bathroom. It would be a bit crowded for two, but of course you'd have access to the rest of the house as well."

"Two?" Mac asked immediately, with a quick worried glance taking in both Vic and Li Ann.

Huang looked slightly surprised. "Your Director told us that Li Ann would be continuing to work at the Agency, in a behind-the-scenes capacity."

"Oh, she did, did she?" Li Ann murmured. "Last night?"

Vic suppressed a snort. Trust the Director to figure she could predict everyone's choices before they were made.

"But we have several guest rooms," Geneviève added quickly. "We'd be happy to convert one to receive Li Ann more-or-less permanently. Your Director did explain the, er, structure of your relationship to us. We don't have any problem with it."

"Ah," Mac said, "this is an _amazing_ offer. But did the Director really tell you the nitty gritty about why we got pushed out of the field? Because I'm not sure we're actually qualified as bodyguards, anymore."

"Mac?" Vic said quietly, though obviously everyone at the table could still hear him. "Do you have some reservations about this?"

Mac shook his head. "Only that it might be too good to be true."

"The Director did explain the circumstances of your retirement, in some detail," Huang said. "I hope you're not uncomfortable with us having been briefed on what really should be private medical information—your Director has always had her own very utilitarian notions about information-sharing."

"She sure has," Vic concurred, under his breath.

"So we understand that Mac is no longer healthy enough to be a field agent, and that Vic has developed some ... aversion to violence," Geneviève said. "Well. Between ninety-nine and a hundred percent of the job that we're asking you to do would be childcare. Between the two of you, we're confident that you could handle it."

"Also maybe some light housekeeping," Huang added, looking a little hopeful. "Do you do housekeeping?"

"Vic is a great cook!" Li Ann said. At which point _Vic_ kicked her under the table.

"As for the other, hypothetical one percent—well, even as you are, you certainly have more effective combat skills than anyone else we could _hope_ to afford to hire," Geneviève said. "And we're absolutely confident that you would protect Taylor with everything you've got."

"Of course we would," Vic said.

Frankly, if somebody threatened _Taylor's_ life, he was pretty sure he could manage to shoot them.

"Does that mean you're saying yes?" Geneviève asked, looking hopeful.

"Ah..." Vic gave a quick sideways look at Mac and Li Ann. He couldn't quite read their expressions. And Vic himself really wasn't sure _what_ he thought. This was all happening very fast. "Could we have a little time to think about this?"

"Of course," Huang said. "Take as much time as you need."

"Er—a few days, maybe?" Geneviève said. "Well, we do need to _know_, one way or the other. So that we can start thinking about other possibilities, if you decide against it."

"Actually, maybe we just need a few minutes," Mac jumped in. "Could we talk in another room?"

"Of course," Geneviève said. "You can have the living room."

* * *

They huddled close together, almost nose-to-nose-to-nose, and talked softly. Geneviève and Huang were surveillance experts—what were the chances they didn't have their living room bugged?

"I want to say yes," Mac said immediately.

"But?" Vic asked—because Mac's tone had implied one.

"Tell me what you both think, first," Mac said.

"I think I want to say yes, too," Vic admitted. "But it all feels a little too easy, doesn't it? Suddenly Geneviève and Huang want us living in their house, raising their daughter?"

"Well, the Director's behind it," Li Ann said. "Obviously. We don't know what all she told Geneviève and Huang. Or promised them. Or threatened them with."

"Jesus, this would put us right back in her sphere of influence," Vic realized. "And we've barely been out of the Agency for _twenty-four hours_."

"I'm not even out," Li Ann reminded him.

"Good point," Vic said. "Huh. Do you think the Director intends for you to become _her_ spy in Geneviève and Huang's household?"

"Maybe you're overthinking this," Mac suggested. "Maybe the Director just saw a way to help us and Geneviève and Huang and Taylor all at the same time. We needed a job; the Bouchard-Wongs needed a bodyguard slash nanny. The Director just made the connection."

"Since when are _you_ a starry-eyed optimist when it comes to the Director's motivations?" Vic asked.

"Since it gave him a way to stay with Taylor," Li Ann observed. "Obviously."

"Does that mean you think we should say no?" Mac asked, with palpable trepidation.

"No way," Li Ann said. "I think that this is an amazing gift that we never expected, and we should definitely accept it."

"So, wait, what's the thing that _you're_ worried about?" Vic asked Mac.

"I'm worried that the Director only told Geneviève and Huang whatever she thought it would take to get them to make this offer to us," Mac said. "And that she _left out_ everything else. And that when they find out the rest, they won't want me looking after Taylor anymore and this all collapses."

Vic indicated his confusion with a slight shake of his head. "What do you mean?"

"Come on. Think about it. I am _fucked up_, Vic. In so many ways. If you were a parent, would you want me looking after your kid?"

"Um, effectively for the past four months I've _been_ a parent, and I _did_ want you looking after my kid," Vic pointed out. "If I didn't think you were okay to look after Taylor, I never would've left you alone with her."

"Mac has a point," Li Ann said. "He looks pretty bad, on paper. Ex-triad, serious PTSD and substance abuse issues—it's highly possible that the Director didn't mention any of that when she was pushing for this set-up."

Mac winced. "Wow, thanks for the pep talk, Li Ann."

"Hey, I was _agreeing_ with you," Li Ann said. "And I'm ex-triad too. And a former prostitute. We could hope that Geneviève and Huang never find out these things about us—but it's like they said about not lying to Taylor about her being adopted. If the truth comes out too late, it damages the relationship."

"You were a _child_ prostitute," Vic pointed out, because it was horrible that Li Ann would count that against herself. "You had literally no choice."

"Geneviève and Huang are educated, upper-class professionals," Li Ann said. "They have clean, soft hands and beautiful furniture. Taylor is their late-in-life dream baby. They're panicking right now because they nearly lost her, but when they stop to think about who we really are, will they still want her to know us?"

"They're elite defence contractors who made shady deals with the Director on the side," Vic reminded them all. "_They_ made choices that resulted in their daughter being kidnapped by Chinese agents. Their previous nanny was _killed_, and they're asking us to step into that role. I think they might already know _exactly_ who we are."

"Can you find out?" Mac asked.

"Huh?" Vic said. "Me?"

Mac nodded. "If we can get you alone with Geneviève or Huang—ideally both of them—could you figure out what their real angle is? What they expect from us? And if the Director _was_ keeping things back—could you let them know?"

"Sorry, what? You want me to tell them all that stuff about your past?"

Mac nodded again. "I don't think I can do it. But they need to know."

"I mean, I'm really not sure that they do," Vic protested. "Not _everything_. I mean, Jesus, maybe the PTSD is something they should know about, but for instance you're completely sober now; your history is your business."

"Which is why you guys always tell my doctors about it?"

Vic rolled his eyes. "Well, it is a _medical_ issue."

"Vic," Mac said a little desperately, "_I_ don't know if it's a good idea for Taylor to have me in her life. I don't know _anything_ about good parents! You have to let Geneviève and Huang know the truth about me, and let them decide."

Li Ann hesitated, then nodded her agreement. "Let's do this right," she said. "Our relationship with our daughter and her parents should be based on honesty. And not the Director's manipulations."

"Oh my God," Vic said, faintly. They both looked so hopeful, nervous and vulnerable right now. "Okay, I'll do my best. Help me get Geneviève and Huang to myself, and I'll take it from there."

* * *

Geneviève was alone in the kitchen when they came back. "Huang is giving Taylor her bath," she said. "He'll come back down when she's in bed. Have you come to a decision?"

"Hey, actually," Mac said, opening up with a loose, friendly grin, "Would you be up for me and Li Ann taking over the bedtime routine for tonight? We'd love to do it."

"And I was, ah, hoping to ask you and Huang some more questions about the job offer," Vic said, taking Mac's cue.

Geneviève hesitated for a moment, but then nodded. "Sure, why not," she said. "Upstairs, if the bath is still happening it'll be the second door on your left; otherwise, the nursery is across the hall and through the nanny suite."

When Mac and Li Ann had gone, Geneviève turned to Vic. Gave him a slightly awkward smile. "Would you like another glass of wine?" she asked.

"Sure," Vic said, because Geneviève sounded like _she_ wanted one.

She got them fresh glasses, and a chilled bottle of white from the fridge. Huang arrived as she was pouring, and she wordlessly fetched him a glass.

"So," she said finally, leaning against both the counter and Huang, and regarding Vic over the rim of her glass, "they assign the cop to interrogate us."

Vic gave a little shrug. "They're nervous. They have some questions about your expectations."

"Like what has possessed us to give Taylor's birth parents full access to her, and aren't we worried that she'll bond with them instead of us?" Geneviève suggested, and took a big swallow of wine. "Yes. Those are some good questions."

"Ah, sure," Vic said. "Let's start with that."

"Well, she always had nannies," Huang said. "Of course we worried about _that_, at first. When she was with the nanny all day, and us for only an hour at most in the evening..."

"She did bond with the nannies, naturally," Geneviève added. "But it didn't prevent her from forming a connection with us."

"But in fact we'd noticed that it was becoming increasingly stressful for Taylor when there was a changeover in her care," Huang said. "And the changeovers happened much more often than we'd like. The live-in position is quite demanding. The women left us when they found other jobs—daytime-only, or as daycare teachers."

"We have some hope," Geneviève said, "that the position would be uniquely appealing to you and Mac. Well, for the obvious reason. And that you would be able to stay with us long-term, and give Taylor some real stability."

Huh. Vic looked at Geneviève and Huang carefully. "It sounds like you're envisioning us becoming a part of your family."

"Well..." Huang hedged.

But Geneviève contradicted him with a quick, firm "Yes." And she took another drink. "I have four parents," she said.

Vic blinked. "Huh?"

"My parents divorced when I was about Taylor's age. By the time I was five, they had both remarried. So for almost as long as I can remember, I've had a mother, a father, a step-mother, and a step-father. They all raised me. They all loved me. I love all of them."

"So ... you think Taylor should have five?"

Huang frowned. "You would be her caregivers. _We_ are her parents. That needs to be clear."

Geneviève touched his arm. "It will be," she said to him. Turning back to Vic, she added, "As Taylor grows, and is capable of understanding such things, we would like her to know that Li Ann and Mac are her biological mother and father. But everyone involved must understand that Huang and I are her actual parents. We have the legal rights and responsibilities. We have the last call on any decisions related to her care." She hesitated for a moment, apparently gathering her thoughts. "When we arrived at the Key River safe house, we didn't know what to expect. Of course we were quite worried about how three secret agents with no childcare experience would have managed to look after Taylor for four months. But also, knowing that Li Ann and Mac _were_ her birth parents—we had some fear of resistance, on their part, to giving her back. But in fact they both impressed us with their respect for our relationship with Taylor, despite the fact that the separation was obviously grieving them."

Vic cleared his throat and took a sip of wine. "Ah, at one point back there when you were picking Taylor up, _I_ called Mac and Li Ann her 'real parents'," he said. He shrugged apologetically. "I shouldn't have. You should know—Mac and Li Ann were _always_ clear that you were the real parents."

Huang nodded. "Thank you for telling us that. That is reassuring."

"They do have some reservations about the set-up you're proposing," Vic said. "Well, mostly they want to know that you're going in eyes-open. I think they're both afraid of letting themselves believe that Taylor can be a part of their lives, and then losing her again if you change your minds and cut off contact later."

Geneviève nodded solemnly. "We do understand the grief of losing a child. All too well. I know this must seem very sudden, but believe me that Huang and I did not make this decision lightly. What can we do to set their minds at ease?"

"They want to make sure that you know who they are." _And ... here we go._ Vic took a drink of wine. "Do you know how agents are recruited? Typically?"

Huang nodded. "From prison."

"Last night, your Director did emphasize to us that _you_ were wrongfully convicted, in the first place," Geneviève added. "You were innocent."

"Did she?" Vic smiled faintly. "That's nice of her."

"We understand that that was not the case for Mac and Li Ann," Huang said. "But your Director assured us that their former crime family has been completely wiped out. There's absolutely no danger of them becoming re-entangled."

"That's certainly true," Vic acknowledged. "But it will always be part of their history. They want to make sure that you've thought about that."

Geneviève nodded. "In fact we certainly did have some hesitations, on that front. But your Director stressed to us that in their time as agents, Mac and Li Ann never used violence inappropriately or excessively. Despite their background, they have a reliable moral compass."

Well, Vic would be curious to know what the _Director_ considered inappropriate or excessive violence. But he decided to let that one go. "And did she tell you anything else about their pasts?" he asked. "Besides the fact that they were adopted into the Tangs?"

Geneviève shook her head. "No. Why? Is there something else we should know?"

Vic sighed. "Okay. Look. Mac and Li Ann have had _very_ tough lives. They asked me to talk to you about this, because they're afraid that if you know the whole truth about them, you won't want them around Taylor anymore, and they want to face that sooner rather than later. I think they're a little afraid that they don't _deserve_ to be around Taylor. So I'm going to tell you some things, and it's going to sound like I'm trying to talk you out of letting Mac and Li Ann into Taylor's life. But that's _not_ what's happening. They're wonderful with her. I watched them look after her for four months. They're careful and gentle and loving and nurturing. They are _nothing_ like their own parents."

"And what were their parents like?" Geneviève asked.

Vic set his wine glass—still half full—down on the kitchen counter. "Li Ann doesn't talk much about her birth parents," he said. "But they sold her into prostitution when she was twelve."

The matching looks of shock on Geneviève and Huang's faces were reassuring to Vic, actually. Vic still didn't know much about what _they_ were like, as people or as parents. But he was glad to know that they hadn't lived lives that would prepare them to take that particular revelation in stride.

"She doesn't talk about _that_ very much, either," Vic said. "The Tang godfather adopted her out of the brothel, and she always expresses gratitude about that—for the rescue. When she was recruited by the Agency, she was relieved to leave the life of crime behind, but she always maintained her affection for the godfather. Even though he tried to have her and Mac killed."

Geneviève and Huang exchanged a worried sideways look, but didn't interrupt.

"As for Mac, his mother was involved in the international drug trade in South-East Asia. She carted him along with her from country to country when he was little. It was a very unstable, very unsafe childhood. She was killed—in front of him—when he was thirteen. His father took custody, but then abandoned him in Hong Kong a little while later. Mac ended up living on the street. He survived by stealing, and then by getting involved with street-level drug dealers. Eventually he attracted the attention of Michael Tang, the Tang godfather's son. Michael brought him into the Tang family." Vic hesitated, wondering whether to say anything about the nature of _that_ relationship—but decided not to. He couldn't see any possible relevance to Huang and Geneviève's parenting decisions.

"Thank you for telling us all that," Geneviève said. "I'm certainly very, very sorry to hear that Li Ann and Mac have had such brutal, difficult lives. You hear rumours, you speculate, about the sorts of people who become agents—but it's difficult to picture them as children." She finished the last bit of wine in her glass, and poured herself a refill. "But you can tell them that this doesn't change our decision." She quickly met Huang's eyes, with a question—but he nodded, agreeing.

"There's more," Vic said, evenly. "You have to understand, those kinds of experiences—they leave _scars_. Mac, in particular, has had some very dark times." He took a breath. Tapped his fingers on the counter next to his wine glass, but didn't pick it up. Mac had _asked_ him to do this. It wasn't a betrayal. "He has clinical PTSD. He has night terrors; he's on antidepressants. He has used drugs and alcohol abusively, in the past. He has attempted suicide."

"I see." Geneviève exchanged another look with Huang. "And how is he doing now?"

"A lot better," Vic assured her quickly. "_So_ much better. He's been in therapy—" _oops_, shit, the Director didn't know that, moving right along— "and he's been staying sober, and staying on his meds, and basically since the spring he's been pretty stable."

"_This_ spring?" Huang asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ah, well, okay, true. That maybe wasn't very long, all in all. "A lot of pretty difficult things happened around last Christmas," Vic mentioned.

"The destruction of the Tangs," Geneviève reminded Huang, under her breath.

"And Michael tried to kill Mac and Li Ann," Vic added, since that had been a pivotal moment in all their lives. "And nearly succeeded."

Huang and Geneviève looked at each other silently for a moment. Vic got the feeling that they were somehow managing to communicate, despite the fact that their expressions barely even changed. He wondered, suddenly, how long they'd been married.

"Victor, do you think that Mac is capable of looking after Taylor safely?" Huang asked.

Vic took a moment to consider his response very carefully. "I know that he is," he said. "But. There might be times when he isn't. He might need a lot of flexibility sometimes, and support. If you're thinking of us as _employees_—just a couple of replaceable bodyguard/nannies with pretty good resumes—he might not live up to your expectations. Like I said, he's been pretty much okay since the spring. But I haven't even known him long enough to guess if he might take another nosedive, someday. I mean, probably not? Not when he has work to do, and me and Li Ann looking out for him. I think he'll probably be okay. But I don't know for sure." He grimaced. "And there's another thing. Physically. I understand that this job is going to be mostly childcare, not combat. But there are going to be times when he's not able to do the childcare. He sort of brought this up, earlier, and I guess the Director gave you some info too, but I'm not sure you're really understanding how badly disabled he is. I mean, he _looks_ strong and healthy."

"He looks very fine," Geneviève agreed a bit archly, smirking into her wine glass. Huang looked askance at her, and she laughed. "What, I can _admire_. I won't _touch_."

"But he has severe lung damage, and we're still trying to get used to what that means. One thing it means is that he's likely to get sick a lot. Ah, last month, he caught a cold from Taylor. And then he developed pneumonia and nearly died."

Geneviève nodded. "That did get a mention in the report that your Director gave us."

"So ... I guess _I_ need some reassurance, here," Vic said. "That you'll back me up in making sure that Mac doesn't get pushed too hard. When he gets sick, he needs to take time off to rest. And if he gets _really_ sick, if he ends up in the hospital again—I want to be able to stay with him."

Geneviève and Huang exchanged another complex look, and then Huang nodded. "That's reasonable," he said. "We could find ways to make that work."

"We are proposing to hire you, to pay you," Geneviève said, "to give structure to this relationship. But of course we couldn't possibly think of Mac as just an employee. And he's not replaceable at all."

"Taylor is our daughter," Huang said. "After we met Li Ann and Mac—after we saw them with her—we realized that they're part of Taylor's family too, there's no getting around that. Which means that they're connected to us. Part of our own family, by extension."

"And it also occurred to us, as we were going over the files your Director left us last night," Geneviève continued, "that the gap in age between us, and Mac and Li Ann, is the same as the gap between them and Taylor."

"We could be _their_ parents," Huang said, with a bemused look.

"I tried to express something at dinner, and I think it came out wrong," Geneviève said. "I think I offended Mac, when I spoke of what we owe him and Li Ann for rescuing Taylor at such high cost to themselves. I certainly didn't mean to frame our gratitude as transactional."

"They're part of Taylor's family, not only by blood but also by sacrifice," Huang said. "Considering that, we decided that they deserved the chance to continue to know her. That _she_ deserved the chance to continue to know _them_."

"And after what you've told us, just now—" Geneviève let out a short ironic laugh. "Is it very strange that I feel like I want to mother _them_? You probably shouldn't tell them that."

Vic privately thought that both Mac and Li Ann would probably latch on to Geneviève and Huang pretty quickly, as parental figures, if given half a chance. And maybe that would be good for them; the Bouchard-Wongs certainly seemed like an improvement on the godfather, at least. Or the Director. But it would probably be best to just let that play out naturally, however it went. "I won't," he promised.

"So, have we satisfied you?" Geneviève asked.

Vic scratched his head thoughtfully. "Yeah," he said. "If I haven't scared you off."

"I think we all understand what we're getting into," Huang said. "I'm glad we had this talk."

Geneviève checked her watch. "Do you think Taylor's asleep yet?"

Huang pressed a button on a small device that was sitting on the kitchen counter. Its palm-sized screen came to life.

"Oh my God," Vic said, "is that a night-vision baby monitor?"

"She's asleep," Huang nodded.

Geneviève frowned. "Do you think Mac and Li Ann are coming back down?"

"They're probably waiting upstairs to give us time to finish talking," Vic guessed.

Geneviève put down her wineglass. "Then we'd better go to them."

Vic followed Geneviève and Huang up the curving staircase to the second floor, thinking, _I guess I live here now_. What a strange thought.

Li Ann and Mac were sitting together on the couch in the nanny suite's sitting room. Mac's arm was around Li Ann's shoulders, and they both looked very tense. They straightened up at everyone's arrival, and Mac put his finger to his lips. "Taytay's asleep," he whispered.

"We know," Geneviève whispered back. "We have a monitor in the kitchen."

Assuming that the closed door at the back of the room led to Taylor's room, Vic peeked through the open ones. The first was a small bathroom, and the second was a bedroom; there was a queen-sized bed, stripped down to its mattress, a set of drawers, and a shallow closet, empty and standing open.

"It's not very big," he whispered, coming back to the sitting room.

"I don't need a lot of space," Mac whispered back.

"You sure don't," Vic agreed, thinking of the four boxes.

"So, wait, does that mean...?" Mac lit up hopefully.

Vic beckoned with his head. Li Ann had already followed Geneviève and Huang back out into the main hallway.

"So it went okay?" Mac asked, when they got into the hall. "Your talk?"

"I think so," Vic nodded—and then looked questioningly at Geneviève and Huang.

"I think we understand each other," Geneviève said. "Well enough to begin with, anyway. So—will you agree? To live here, and look after Taylor, and protect her?"

"Yes?" Mac said, a little hesitantly, looking to Vic for reassurance. Vic gave it to him, in the form of a nod and a smile, and Mac turned back to Geneviève and Huang to give them a firm, enthusiastic: "Yes!"

"And you're welcome here any time," Huang said to Li Ann. "To visit them, or us."

"Would it be all right," Geneviève asked, "if I gave you a hug?"

"Uh huh," Mac said quickly, and although it looked like Geneviève was moving in for a perfunctory, formal embrace, Mac deftly drew Li Ann in too and held on.

Vic met Huang's eyes around the back of the cluster. "We're big fans of hugs," Vic mentioned. "You should get in on this one." And then he took his own advice, stepping in and throwing his arms around Mac's shoulders on one side, Li Ann's on the other. Geneviève laughed softly from the middle as Huang joined them.

"Welcome to our family," Huang said then, with a bit of a catch in his voice.

Vic smiled. He felt optimistic, and content. His own dreams of family, of a future with Mac and Li Ann and Taylor, were coming true in a completely unexpected form. But this was better than the dreams—this was reality, with room for them to live and breathe and grow. He nodded to Huang, and cleared his throat. Felt his eyes prickle, just a bit. "Welcome to ours."


End file.
